levelhead

Quarter life cry-sis

2011-09-17T11:30:00.001+01:00

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leaking tap

2011-08-23T11:44:00.001+01:00

ostrich-man

2011-07-29T23:58:00.001+01:00

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Fevicol

2011-07-27T14:16:00.003+01:00

Walter, why are you and Stina together all the time?

Sarcastic Walter: Because we are joined by the hips.

Walter on hindsight: No, I mean; we are not joined in the front or the back. We are more like side to side.

Walter and Stina are my co-workers

small talk

2011-07-12T13:20:00.004+01:00

(As it happened)

I usually do not drink coffee. However, as events need to turn out the way they need to turn out for the subsequent story to be written, I was swamped by an uncontrollable urge yesterday in the morning to drink coffee. So I ambled to the office cafeteria to get myself a cup of coffee.

On those rare occasions when I drink coffee, I drink it with a lot of milk and sugar. But yesterday was a day when the waitress would ask me if I would like a black coffee and I would say yes.

As if cutting down one sachet of sugar could turn my well developed single pack into starved six packs, I skipped the condiments area as well.

It was only when I was back at my desk did I realise that it was better to stick to the usual.

I now had two choices. I could either walk back to the cafeteria to fill my cup with milk and dump a bag of sugar on to it or walk across to the side of the building I usually keep away from, to the refreshment area that had milk and sugar.

No brownie points for guessing where I went. The refreshment area was very small. It was literally a hole in the wall with space just enough for two people to stand next to each other.

As the coffee turned from black to light brown, I turned around to go back to my desk; only that the way out was blocked by a lady I had never seen before in my part of the building.

'Uh, I feel so tired', She started.

As it was less than 24 hours since I took a resolution to learn to do small talk and pretend to be a little more social, I said 'It is Monday morning. What do you expect? So is everyone.' This in hindsight is not a great line to open a conversation.

But nevertheless, she continued on, 'I have a house with gardens on three of its sides. For four hours yesterday I was out in the sun gardening.' I thought, 'Now, that is small talk!'

Just then I saw Mary walk towards us to the refreshment area and stand behind this lady.

The lady continued on, not noticing that someone was behind her, 'I was on my knees for four hours. It was soooo tiring.' To emphasise her tiredness, she started to moan out very loudly.

I can't say that I get turned on by someone moaning in close proximity (How often does someone come close to you and start moaning?), but I was very turned on by the sounds she was making.

The expression on Mary's face only confirmed that she must have heard only part of the conversation.

Not wanting to prolong this any further, I squeezed past the lady, who was still oblivious of the effect she was having on the people around, to walk out from the area.

It was only after I saw Mary's wide open mouth and stunned stare on to my pants did I realise that I had a distinctive boner.

Since then, I have been unsuccessfully browsing the Internet to buy Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility.

on how a mermaid swallowed popeye and burped out the joker

2011-07-03T21:14:00.019+01:00

Daddy, can we go and buy Azmuth this afternoon?

You first have to meet grandma. She has been expecting you, hasn’t she? Don’t you want to spend time with her today?

Okay. Can we go tomorrow?

Okay.

But can I also get Zombozo?

Okay!

You know you are spoiling your son...

Arulmozhi smiled to himself as the conversation he overheard faded into the noise of the landing aircraft. That is the exact conversation his wife would have with him in five year’s time.

He would buy Rajendran a Superman shirt with a cape. He would buy one for himself. The father and son would wear their shirts and streak past market streets and by lanes in his Bullet chasing wicked villains and saving beautiful princesses locked up in fortresses. Vanathi, concerned as she always is, will ring him...

Aren't you home yet? Lunch is getting cold...

His ringing phone brought him back to reality.

Has the flight landed?

How is Raju?

He is sleeping? He sleeps with his mouth open; just like you!

...it is a pleasant Friday morning here in ...

Thirteen hours is all that is between now and Arulmozhi seeing his new born son for the first time.

Little droplets of sweat trickled down his brows as he disembarked from the aircraft - a dam of locked up water streaking through its floodgates, seeking its freedom.

A lone black and yellow Premier Padmini parked under the only Gulmohar tree in the airport was the taxi Arulmozhi was going to get into. He always knew these things. But he didn’t know how. Or why. But he knew.

-------------

Parthiban parked his car under the same tree for the last four years. It was his lucky spot. He did not believe in God and found many religious practices to be plain superstitious. But he liked to be superstitious. He checked his horoscope daily from a Murugan calendar he kept in his hut. He wore black shirts on a particular day, every year, to celebrate the anniversary of his meeting Padmini. And he always parked under the Gulmohar tree. They were his little joys of life. And Padmini.

Parthiban rolled the windows up and rubbed his hands together to keep himself warm. Seventeen years in the city, he still found the mornings to be cold. He squinted his eyes as rays of sunlight pierced through the ambling westward clouds and embraced him. It was going to rain that morning. Some of the rays, stung by the beauty of the Gulmohar tree, drifted towards its bright red flowers and melted the morning dew, which formed a rivulet and headed towards the tip of a just sprouted leaf. The leaf quivered at the first touch of water and bent backwards dropping the dew onto the car’s bonnet.

Padmini hissed. Parthiban smiled at her and turned to his left. A sweeper swept the vast expanse of tarmac at the entrance of the airport. That was Parthiban fifteen years ago. The sweet melody of Suprabaatham from a distance pierced through the glass windows. Parthiban rolled the windows down. He has worked hard. Padmini was his life. He ran his hands over his bulging pant pockets to check that the money was still there. Later that morning, he would pay the last installment for his taxi loan and then; Padmini would be all but his.

-------------

The genteel morning breeze fluffed playfully, ruffling Poonguzhali's curly, black hair that coiled down to her wheatish shoulders. She stood at the bus stop, smiling to herself, as she waited for her bus to arrive. In spite of the shade that covered her from the sun, the diamond on her pierced nose lit up, reflecting the radiance in her self. She has been waiting for this day all her life. She will officially become the guardian angel at the hospital tomorrow, and death will have to stand up for a bloody good fight before she could lay hands on Poonguzhali's patients. She knew it. And so did the others. Amudhan spent the last six weeks collecting milk white feathers to knit two angel-like wings for her. He would surprise her at her convocation this evening. She looked at her own tender hands. They did not seem any different to the hands of any of her patients until they weaved their magic. Her dexterity and skill perplexed every seasoned surgeon and every ounce of their jealousy melted away as they melted in her guileless joyful laughter. She has not had a deep sleep in many years. Tonight, she will sleep to her heart's content. But from tomorrow, the sleep will be gone; for tomorrow is the beginning of her life's true purpose.

-------------

Thirumalai opened the rickety wooden cupboard and pulled out a neatly ironed white shirt. It was a nostalgic morning. After all, today was his last day at work and he will be a retired man tomorrow. He vividly remembered his first day at work as a cleaner in a private bus company. He was twenty years old then. In one year's time, he became a bus conductor and it was from his first salary as a bus conductor that he purchased that cupboard.

Life changed many folds and took new turns since then. One playful crush turned to love and eventually ended in wedlock. First came the daughter and in two year's time, a little son popped out. It all seemed so fast and in no time, the rented one bedroom LIG flat and its occupants were his life. He let go off his life long dream of becoming a gardener and instead got himself a licence to drive a bus. Like many middle class parents, he sacrificed his dreams so that his children could live theirs. He has no regrets. While even his supervisor's son lives only in Delhi, both his son and daughter live in America. He was very proud of it.

It was only in the last ten years, after his kids became financially independent, that the dreams began to reoccur to him - An unending vast expanse of roses, with a lone mango tree in the middle. Roses of every kind - the reds, the yellows, the whites, the blues, the blacks and even the greens would form a canopy of colour and stretch as far as any eye could see. A mat of dark green grass would adorn the myriad of footpaths that led to the sole mango tree.

He went to computer classes for a month to learn to search the Internet. Since then, every night, he spent an hour on the computer his son had bought him, learning about flowers and farming, making notes and saving all that he read onto a folder he called 'The Dream'.

It was six months ago when he spotted a lone mango tree ten miles from where he lived. He parked his TVS Champ by the side of the road and walked up to the land. A heavy gust blew into him. A streak of lightning and a roar of thunder signalled of the impending rain. Thirumalai knelt down and picked up a handful of the red soil. He felt a lump in his throat when he took it close to his nostrils and let the smell of the soil traverse past his windpipe to his lungs. He knew it right then. That was to be his farm.

-------------

Mr. Arulmozhi, would you like to fill a customer satisfaction form for us?

It is A. Verma

It annoyed Arulmozhi to be called Arulmozhi.

A. Verma did not like the long flight to India. He was not sure whether he did not like the long flight or his trip to India. He hated the noisy toddlers and their limitless capacity to cry. He hated the endless chatter of the women in a cabin in which he seemed to be the only guy.

In two hours, he will be in the filth and dirt he came from, amongst family and friends who had no sense or recognition of anyone's private life. The noise and the sheer number of people he was to expect was already bearing down upon him.

The women clamoured for their hand baggage even as the flight rumbled down the runway.

...it is a pleasant Saturday morning here in ...

Little droplets of sweat trickled down his brows as he disembarked from the aircraft. It was the beginning of his three long week stay at hell.

A. Verma called his driver on his cellphone as he approached the airport parking area.

Where are you?...

Yes, I have spotted you

As A. Verma walked briskly towards the black BMW parked under the Gulmohar tree in the airport, nurses scrambled around the patient who was just dropped off at the hospital entrance by an ambulance. Early morning accidents are a common feature in a day for the nurses and they all knew what was expected of them. As they passed through the hospital corridors, Amudhan sent out a series of instructions to the doctors and nurses until he said 'Poonguzhali...' and stopped. Every one of them stopped and stood numb for a split second and looked into each other's eyes. But only for a split second.

You.. What are you staring at? Come on... get going

Amudhan screamed at a young doctor as continued to wheel the patient through the corridors.

Exhibit V

2011-06-20T20:08:00.001+01:00

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Part Deux - Page One

2011-05-10T07:04:00.002+01:00

I am told that great people keep diaries, which they publish when they are old to cover their expenses. I feel great today and I would also like to invest in my future. So I have decided to keep a diary. At least for today. You never know what may become of tomorrow.

09 May 11 - Monday

No pizzas this week. That was my waking thought this morning. I woke up at 6. Ironing your clothes the previous day and having a shower the night before make you feel like you have a lot of time to do other things before you leave for office.

I called mum. She is now a partner in that chemical fertiliser distribution company. I do not know its name. I must ask her.

I called Lavanya to check how she was getting on with the work I asked her to do. She spoke in a hushed tone. I asked her if she was unwell. She laughed and said she was in the office and so spoke in a low voice. I said Baveeshna does that as well. Asking personal questions to people you do not know makes them feel at ease.

**********

I was reminded of the film Gangster No.1 midway through my breakfast. I told my self that I must dress up properly from now on, just as Paul Bethany does in that film. So I shaved, washed my hair and applied some gel. Such special days need special shirts. So I put on my only shirt with cuff-links.

**********

I was told to ready myself for an interview in 20 minutes. This will be my first time to be interviewed. In the next 20 minutes, I came up with five adjectives which I told myself I will use in the interview. I did not have a chance to use them; together or separately.

I guess the interview was not that bad because I was invited to a photo shoot this Friday to complete the story. Bad news. My experimentation with cheese and chocolate last weekend has had its lasting side effects, literally, and I do not want to be marked for eternity as the fat kid with a lump under his throat.

*********
That birthday cake is inviting. Yield. Don’t. Yield. Yield.

Yielded.

*********

It took forty minutes to shop a carton of milk and a bunch of bananas. Blame the summer and the girls in their short shorts.

*********

The sun is blazing. I might as well eat my dinner at 6 and wait for the sun to go down. I will then go for my run at 9.

It is 9 now. The movie is good. So are the chocolates. I should continue to watch the movie and finish the chocolates. I will run tomorrow. There is no point doing everything today. I must leave something for tomorrow to keep me going. Now, back to the movie.

stinky verses

2011-04-29T22:12:00.001+01:00

Is it you?
Or
Is it you?
Accusing glances
On the left
Nostrils on rose petals
On the right
Barking dogs don't bite
Biting dogs don't bark
No Gollum says 'It's Mine'
Breaker of all tranquillity divine
In sweeping waves
From gluttons and anorexic babes
The mystery remains
And it is called the story of a smelly fart

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You Name it!

2011-02-17T23:08:00.011Z

I am bad with names.

"So what was your name again?" That is something that a lot of people can associate with me. However, a deficiency in one area is always compensated by an ability in another.

My ability is to make up names.

I first started naming things when I was two or three years old. I named my dad's motorcycle Baaki. The motorbike did not look anything like Bhagyaraj and I have no clue as to why I named the bike Baaki.

Spot the difference

Then I went on to name my yet to be born sister Saamitha. For reasons I can not fathom, my parents did not like that name which is why my sister is now called Baveeshna.

What do you do when your parents don't approve of the things you are good at? Wait till you can earn your first bucks, break away from them and live your dream.

So after the Saamitha episode, I had to wait for a full 17 years before I got my first job and thus my first salary. I had to name something but did not possess anything that was mine.

So I went back to where it all started. I bought myself a motorbike and called it Snow White.

Snow White

That was not enough. 17 years of suppressed ability needed a vent. So I bought myself a mobile phone and called it Rosemary Telesco. Then I went on to buy a laptop called Isabella. This continued and I am now with Rosemary Telesco VI and Isabella Jr. A few years down the line, when I bought my first car, I named it Red-dy.

Reddy

When I sold my first car and bought another, I had to call it Jackson - after all Jinku Jackson has been sponsoring me all along since my financial independence.

Ask him and he is more likely to say my-financial-in-depend-ence-on-him

A picture is worth a thousand words

2011-02-15T08:53:00.001Z

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cold start

2011-02-14T14:52:00.002Z

It is a bad idea to spend New Year's eve with a bunch of strangers in an unknown watering hole and in an unknown country. Do not expect any positive turn of events when you are blurry brained by 9pm. But if you have those rare genes to stand up against any amount of brain-wipe, things can get worse. It is a social stigma to be born with sticky feet and even the least attractive of all female species can turn you down on the dance floor. There is a reason why people queue in front of cash machines before a long night of brain damage. You may find out why on another sober Saturday afternoon. Bartenders leave for home at 4AM and bouncers are capable of bouncing you out of a pub. It is not in a bouncer's job description to hire a cab for you. Your bank balance can crash to a scary single digit number and you may walk around the road asking passer-bys for a 5p on New Year's day.

Wedding season

2011-01-18T16:34:00.003Z

The flavour of the last one year has been weddings. Over the last six months, anyone I call and anyone who calls me has the news. They are getting married soon. So, these days, I invariably start all telephone conversations with a 'congratulations'.

What about the ones that I know are already married? There is a congratulations for them too. They have either taken their first steps towards spreading the human race or have just succeeded in doing so. Why over-crowding our already over-crowded trains, buses and airplanes requires a congratulation is a question which when asked will turn you into a social outcast. So instead, congratulate them and there are good chances that you will be invited for a meal.

That I begin phone calls with congratulations and that more often the congratulations turns out to be real has turned some of the more persevering and therefore not so lucky friends of mine to ring me very frequently lately.

A message to all those of you. Stop calling me. I am losing my new found super-power because of you.

But don't despair. There is a way out.

Turn to god.

Jose has always told me this - When you want something, turn to god. I realised only half its meaning when I found out that gopal turns to god when he wants free sakkara pongal and full meals. But I guess the human mind offers limitless possibilities and gopal was just scratching the surface.

You guys on the other hand can dig a little deeper - wink at the mums or drop your heads at the site of the daughters - and you may end up giving me a call from the temple.

If things don't turn out to be as you expected, you will atleast walk away with a plate full of sakkara pongal!

Confessions of a shopophobic

2010-12-25T09:04:00.004Z

I hate shopping. That is rather incorrect. I am very lazy. Every week, when I shop for groceries, these are the exact four things I buy - Milk, bread, pizzas and apples. Everything else in the supermarket remains blurred in my vision and it is not until someone tells me that the supermarket also sells Maggi that I find Maggi. Can I say that my wants are limited? May be.

The same goes with clothes. Not that I would like to relate myself with early men and shun my clothes, it is again down to pure laziness. It is also due to my inability to choose from an ocean of similar looking shirts, t-shirts and blue jeans. It is the same dilemma and exasperation of having to pick one gorgeous woman amongst a roomful. I am not telling you that that is a dilemma I face every day. So I let my shirts collars break, my waist outgrow my jeans size and lose all the pairs of socks I have until I have to shop again.

Why do people look at you weirdly when you wear a pair of different coloured socks? Yeah, you lose one in a pair and what do you do? Do you chuck the other in the pair away? That is discrimination. So I give these socks another partner so they can have yet another chance at my smelly feet.

(By the way, don’t tell me you didn’t notice my philosophical intones.)

So I am a shopophobic; until the Internet came along and someone invented the Amazon.com

The Internet changed the way I looked at shopping. You see the November Rain video and three days later, you also see my new Keyboard! Wouldn’t it be great if I shot a similar video, say hello to my new handy-cam. Are handy-cams the only way to shoot? Why not get a gun? Tishauyun... (By the way, MI6 and CIA, I know you are reading this. You should know that this is only a model gun. The rest of you, if you ever wanted to see Captain Jack Sparrow’s gun, you know where to come ) What if in a skirmish, my side is defeated and the enemies take me as a prisoner of war but then turn me into a slave. I know what they do to slaves. They make the slaves row ships and beat the ones that are not strong enough to endure hours and hours of rowing. What do I do? I must prepare for any eventual situation and my new rowing machine is what is going to help me.

This is what happens when I have two weeks of holidays and I am sat at home with nothing but an Internet connection. I need to get out of the house and do something. But how? There is no public transport on Christmas and Boxing day.

How would you like to go for a spin in my new car ;)

Dumb and Dumber

2010-12-02T14:18:00.003Z

Having lost a lot of time waiting for my 'Smart' phone, I decided to not waste any more time but make the full use of it at the earliest. So I went to the nearest pub to find out if smart really is the new sexy.

'Hey, I am a really smart guy. And I have a smart phone. Which makes me doubly smart :D'. I turned more heads at once than I ever have.

The Big Bang Theory is not true.

Fruits of labour

2010-11-30T11:54:00.003Z

For the last year or more, I have been feeling like a stone aged man dropped off by a time machine into the year 2783. Almost everyone I know has a Smartphone while I had one which did not even have text prediction. I could just about do texts, so strictly speaking; I must have said that I felt like being from the Bronze Age. I drew maps on pieces of paper, wrote down bus timings, and remembered a dozen birthdays and a few phone numbers. The phone rarely rang.

Trying to assimilate into the new world, I decided to buy a Smartphone. There were other reasons too. I am a believer of science. So when The Big Bang Theory proclaimed that smart is the new sexy, I realised the reason behind my limited success with the ladies and wanted to change it at the earliest.

However, just before I decided so, I also conducted a human experiment to understand masculine psyche at modified levels of blood ph.

After fourteen hours of experimenting, alongside some willing friends, we concluded the following:

1.The fruits of labour are much more sweeter than plain indulgence
2.Failing at something once does not mean one should give up
3.Failing at something twice means its time to give up and move on

Why those were the conclusions is still as mysterious as the origin of universe.

So.

So I decided to set out to do something worthwhile to be eligible for the phone. It was also the time when my sister informed me that she was getting married and I decided to write the GMAT – yet another of my logic defying conclusions.

I told myself that if I get a 700 on my test, I would get myself a phone. I got a 680. I knew I had yet another chance before it was time to move on. This time, I decided to get admission in a business school.

Why business school? I had valid reasons for a change

1.Girls, lot of girls
2.Hyderabadi Biryani for breakfast, lunch and dinner
3.Student discount at Dutch Dinners

The school however concluded that I was an evil influence and so will not take me in. Failure No: 2. So I decided to ditch the idea that the fruits of labour are much more sweater than plain indulgence and ordered myself a phone.

Three months later Rosemary Telesco VI arrived in a little white box.

Thus were also born two more life lessons for 2010

1. Plain indulgence is great
2. Conclusions drawn at modified blood pH levels work best only at modified blood pH levels

Where is my phone?

2010-11-17T21:16:00.003Z

Word of caution: If you are looking for a happy ending or do not like whining write ups stop reading right here. If you are some kind of an activist, who believes in that we as a world are moving towards 1984 and wants to do something about it or if you are one of those people who forwards anything and everything that you read to a million people, please read on and spread my message of good will.

The first time I saw the Evo on Youtube, I fell in love with it. I wanted one for myself. But for some reason, the people at HTC thought that the Evo was no good for Europe and announced its prettier cousin, the HTC Desire HD.

From that day, every day, I read and reread every bit of everything there is on the web about the Desire HD, until finally HTC announced that the Desire HD could be pre-ordered through a number of online retailers.

I chose play.com

That was the 18th September 2010. I was expected to receive the phone by the 11th October. But then HTC had issues with the launch that play.com emailed me a delayed delivery for the 19th October.

After a sleepless 18th Oct night, I worked from home on the 19th. As I eagerly sat by the door, time ticked very slowly and soon it was end of the day. I was updated on the 20th that the launch date was reset for the 1st November. Five days later, I received an email confirming that my phone was dispatched and that I should expect the phone in three to five days. I was also provided with a tracking number to track my parcel.

Three days later, it was day 4 and then day 5 and soon it was day 6 and no trace of my phone. On day 7 I called the courier company HDNL and I was promised that I will recieve the phone in 2 days.

Two days later, and another day working from home, the phone did not arrive. So I called the courier company only to be told that the phone was lost.

Logically, I called play.com customer service to inform them what I knew from HDNL. They acknowledged that the phone was lost and I was relieved that they did. Then came the bombshell. Though all parties knew that the phone was lost, I was told to wait for 21 days and call them again to tell them that the phone was lost for them to find me a replacement.

Their logic: Company policy. My IQ has to drop fifty points for me to convince myself that their company policy was brilliant.

After very many minutes of haranguing that the principle reason for pre-ordering a phone was to receive the phone long before most people could get it and that if I waited for 21 days to report that the phone was lost in transit, I could be looking at getting an outdated phone.

I heard a million ‘I understand Sir’s. But I am convinced the lady didn’t get a bit of what I said. Finally, she agreed to send me a refund/replacement letter, which I was to send to play.com at my expense. My £470 was in their bank account, so I had to consent.

A day later, the email had not arrived. So I called them again. This time there a new customer service representative who told me that my phone was dispatched on the 25th October. So I had to run through the entire story with her again and tell them one more time why the 21 day rule is so illogical. She agreed to send me a form and told me that she was sending it as we spoke.

A day later, when the email still did not arrive, I wrote to the customer service through their website the whole history of my problem. The form finally arrived.

Another £5 from my pocket for the special trackable delivery as suggested by play.com, off went the form to them. Having had no response from play.com for the next day delivery post, I called them 3 days later only to find that they had not processed my form. The lady promised she was doing it right away and put me on hold. After several minutes of listening to the same listless music, I was informed that my phone would arrive in three to five days. Seemed like a similar story, but I was optimistic. How many times can they possibly go wrong?

It turns out that they can surprise quite a few. A week later, having not received my phone yet, I called them one more time. The lady at the other end informed me that the phone was dispatched on the 25th October...

As I sit here and write this, I am perplexed at the height of customer service I have received. At two points in the so many times I have called them I mentioned to them that it would be a good idea to sue them for their callous attitude. Their replies were the same. ‘OK’. It seemed like they didn’t care. Why would they? They have my £470. Can I really do something about them? I doubt I could. I do not have the time nor the money to do something. But what would I do if I had the time and money? I would buy the company and rip it apart so there is no play.com. The world would be a better place with one stupid company less.

What is the probability?

2010-11-09T21:47:00.003Z

Unlike me, my sister is full of dreams. I dream only twice a year - one in summer and one in winter. She dreamt of living in a large house with a wooden swing and a fish tank. So my brother-in-law, who is so full of love, and bank notes, bought her a house. My parents were overjoyed and planned to visit my sister and her new home.

Exactly two years ago, just before I left India to live in the UK, I gave my dad a blank cheque. I was not sure whether I had paid all my bills and thought a cheque with my dad would cover an emergency.

Exactly one year ago, I changed jobs within the company. The new job had many people calling me on my work mobile. Not wanting to fall for the trap and lose my virility any sooner, I started leaving my personal mobile at the bottom of my bag, while being holed up in all day constructive meetings.

The house my sister and her husband bought was liked by everyone. It was in a well to do area. It has two balconies, a swimming pool and a gym. And most importantly, it had a hefty price tag for both set of parents to boast about. Secretly though, my mom wished for a little more. She wished that her son had a place of his own too.

What is the probability of finding an unsold house in a fifteen floored building with six houses in each floor? What is the probability that of all days, on the day your parents want to ask you about a house they wished you bought, you were on an all day meeting with your phone dug deep in a far away bag? What is the probability that when five people are bidding for one house, your dad remembered the blank cheque you gave him a few years ago? And what is the probability that the cheque was still in his wallet and the number he thought to write on that cheque could clinch the deal and he did just that?

I am good with counting, but really bad with probability. But given that the person in question is me, I would say the probability is one.

And that is how I became a proud owner of a new home and an unmentionable amount of debt...

Jungle Book - Lost & Found

2010-10-21T11:50:00.002+01:00

Six blokes, none with even the slightest experience of even having lived under a thatched roof are camping this weekend. The sprawling endlessness of our myriad and indomitable universe with its canopy of a gazillion twinkling stars will tranquilise us to our dreams. We basically will be lying flat on our backs on hard ground, shivering in the cold, looking up into the blank darkness and having a hard time to sleep. I was only showing off that I know words too. Anyway, it should be fun!

We have hired a van so that all the guys with all our worldly possessions - 2 litres of Jack Daniels, can leave all in one piece. We are also very confident of reaching the national park in one piece. We have two and half drivers - two with no experience of driving a van and the half who has just failed his driving test.

Given our credentials with directions and our testosterone levels that prevent us from asking for directions, there is a good chance that we may spend the rest of our lives as Georges in the jungle. But evil has always prevailed in this world and how can all the evil in the world be lost in a forest. So we are bound to be back to spread our gospel!

braIN damAGE

2010-09-28T23:07:00.003+01:00

What is it with short sleeves?

2010-09-12T19:54:00.002+01:00

For a long time in the brief history of mankind, men and women have done everything they could to be different from each other – men from women and women from men. They marked roles and responsibilities to support their collective survival, they reacted differently to similar situations which usually caused bewilderment to the other and they dressed completely differently although they lived in similar sweltering heat or spine chilling cold.

(Science digression: Neanderthals were supposedly a much more intelligent species than Homo sapiens. Whereas Homo sapiens divided their job responsibilities, Neanderthals wanted to do everything on their own. The Homo sapien men hunted the goat and the women collected bananas. So they had mutton Biryani for main course and banana pudding for dessert. But the Neanderthals, they all went for the goat and ended up throwing spades and spikes at each other and perished.)

But somewhere along the line, some woman with a tiny little chromosomal shakeup wanted what was inherently men's; in addition to what was hers. She wanted to do everything that men did. She wanted men's jobs; so she took it. She wanted men's clothes, so she wore pants. She wanted to be man, so she had sex with other women. This change caught on and before we knew a fair number of women folk wanted everything that was historically men's.

If I were to represent all men, I would have recommended that they relinquish everything wholeheartedly and keep only the TV, the PS3 and the couch for themselves. But some moron wanted a tit for tat and that is where everything went wrong. First came the low waist jeans. And then slowly one after the other the manicures, the chest waxes, the ear rings and the pink shirts came trickling along. That is all okay as long as we, the ones content with what we had, have a choice to be as we were.

But it is not to be. You no longer get a regular sleeved t-shirt that easily. (It is easier to buy a full sleeved t-shirt and cut the sleeves to the length you want.) T-shirts have to reveal biceps, however malnourished they may be. (It is not long before men shave their armpits and wear sleeveless t-shirts.) It is not a pretty site if you don't want to wax your biceps. And some of us with furry coats, that is not what we want to do. The fur is for winter.

I can manage with short sleeved t-shirts but I fear for what is to come in ten years. I could tolerate bearing my midriff but I couldn't tolerate piercing my belly button – from the looks of it, its going to hurt a lot :(

(Photo nicked from Dominik)

How not to prepare for GMAT

2010-09-02T13:25:00.006+01:00

One day my sister rang me up and announced that she was getting married. So I decided to write the GMAT. These two seemingly unrelated events are linked through a very complex logic.

That was April. My sister was getting married in August. That gave me three months to prepare for the test, exactly the time recommended by the Internet guys. Poochi recommended a month (and also trek to Snowdon)

I believe in most things that Rajini says. He was once caught smoking a cigar by his father. So his father bought a room full of cigars and locked Rajini inside and told him that he will be let out only after he smokes all the cigars. Rajini does so happily and in the process is fed up of cigars.

Life Lesson 27: If there is a distraction, be distracted by it to the fullest and soon you will be over the distraction.

So I spent all of May inventing potential distractions and getting distracted by them. In the process, I watched 17 movies, hosted three parties, spent a night at the emergency ward in a hospital,walked only 789 yards in the whole month, replaced blood with alcohol for bodily circulatory functions, took vegetables off my diet and ate 400 grams of meat every day.

By the 1st of June I had distracted myself off every conceivable distraction. But by the 11th of June someone invented the football world cup 2010.

So between the 64 football matches that I watched at home and many bars (one with 3D glasses. Bad idea. It gives you a hangover), 1973 ticks, 7892 crosses, 11 full tests and 2 red bulls my preparation was over. Or atleast I have had enough. I spent the last 2 weeks before the test not knowing what to do. I should have followed Poochi's advice.

I know I have got everything wrong until this point. But in this process, I have amassed enough wisdom to share with the world.

Prepare for not more than 40 days.
Do not drink on the day before a practice test even if you are taking the test on the following afternoon. Alcohol enhances test performance and provides you a false perception that you are super intelligent at all times.
Do not drink red bull during test breaks. Red bull takes effect after 17 hours but drills your bladder in exactly 17 minutes.

Dreaded Questions

2010-03-16T10:49:00.003Z

It was 10 years ago when someone first asked me this question. Since then I have had many people ask me the same question and I have done everything other than hide behind a bush to avoid it.

What is your hobby?

When I first left school to study in a college, the seniors wanted 'to get to know us better' and so they asked us what our hobbies were. They were not particularly impressed when I told them I did not have one. Some of my untruthful friends told the seniors that their hobbies were to listen to music, to watch tv etc. They were all lying. Some dictionary suggested that a hobby was the thing you did in your spare time for pleasure. If you go by the definition all my friends were doing something else for pleasure during their spare time and they were not mentioning it to the seniors. Someone who was slightly inventive said his hobby was philately. But why would one want a collection of his or her saliva under stamps? When I become health minister, I will deem it unhealthy.

When I left college, I assumed real world people asked real questions. But I was wrong. Job interviewers asked me the same dreaded question. So did the landlords. Atleast the landlords had a case. If I told them my hobby was gardening, they had every right to suspect and investigate what I was growing in the backyard.

If I suffered due to the 'what is your hobby?' question in India, I suffer more from the 'what did you do in the weekend?' question in the UK. UK is a land of weather and weekends. The natives and the aliens trying to assimilate into the local culture just can not stop complaining about the weather. When the weather is good, they talk about the weekends; which is most of the time in a year.

To the British, a good weekend is when you took a long walk in the park, or went rowing or cheered your son play football or any one of those activities that I don't really take pleasure at.

'Raja, did you have a good weekend?'
'Absolutely'
'What did you do?'
'Huh, nursed a hangover on Saturday and watched some porn on the Sunday. Good weekend
really!'

Unfortunately, they don't think so.

Herd behaviour

2010-02-17T15:32:00.002Z

Well, I am now officially a project manager. I was shown my new desk and sent to scavenge everything else. So I went around looking for unused phones, monitors, cupboards and chairs. Lunch break is a good time to build your inventory. A lot of things in the office are unused when everyone is queuing for their roast (sliced pig bum). I also found something that looked like an iron whip with a lock at one end. I swear I don't know what it is but I have a suspicion that it could be something to induce bondage tendencies. A closely bonded workplace is always a good place to work in, isn't it?

My work is very simple. I have to come up with an idea that is as revolutionary as the iPhone. In the mean time,I have to take the other less revolutionary ideas, develop less revolutionary products out of them and get the hapless sales guys to sell them to unsuspecting customers.

If I come up with an iPhone like idea, my job is done. Why would the company want to keep me when it has got what it wanted from me? So I guess I will have to keep my mouth shut and not blurt out that one brilliant idea.

Getting the less revolutionary products out to the market is not as big a deal as I initially feared. I do not have to go to a workshop and build spaceships with my own hands. There are worker bees who will do it for me. My job is to make the worker bees build the spaceship that I want while they want to be busy collecting nectar. Similar to a Shepard's job making sure that my cattle graze only in the neighbour's property so I can sell my grass to him. At least now I can explain in a line that my job is similar to a Shepard's job but instead of the cattle, I Shepard men and women!

My herd is a motley group of friesian cows and break-inspector buffaloes.(Have you ever crossed a herd of buffaloes without slamming on the break? For those of you who have never seen buffaloes on road, you definitely don't know how mince meat is made. The burnt rubber after taste must have crossed your mind at some point of time).

Anyway, my friesian cows, like all friesian cows give me more milk than I would have ever imagined. And my dear buffaloes, like any thorough bred buffalo will not move an inch even if I threatened to whack his back.

Now I have this idea. What if I give one hard knuckle in the head if I can't get something done from them? I hope they are grown up enough not to complain to the teacher that I hit them in the head.

Short of brilliance

2010-02-16T23:17:00.004Z

He was not the best player in the team. Infact, he was only the 7th best player in his 6-a-side football team. He stood by the sidelines and hoped that someone would ask him to substitute for them, as he watched the other players run around. Nobody ever seemed to tire. Or at least break a leg so he could play. He stood there as the cold winds tore into his jacket and crushed his bones. He stood there as the rains drenched him to the skin. He stood there for the entire winter and it was the last game of the season that day.

The captain walked in with a new lad and said 'This chap is new to town. And can apparently pass a thing or two. He will come in as first change if someone has to walk out.'

The captain broke his leg that day.

can't pee under pressure

2010-02-03T20:07:00.007Z

"You have not posted anything for over a month now." I was not surprised when my one loyal follower asked me. Yeah! Apparently I have had someone follow my blog. That was exciting. But even more exciting was when another one said the same thing. And another, and another. And slowing the excitement marched away and in place was an unsettling eerie thought that I had to account for all these people. I know I don't have an obligation to write for anyone but I was once an avid reader of pagalak's blog where he was spinning a beautiful story (part 1, part 2, part 3) which he suddenly stopped and got married. It has been two years since then and I still longingly visit his blog with that little glimmer of hope that one day he will complete the story.

I don't compare my posts to his stories. My posts are neither heart rendering or thought provoking. But my posts were regular. And regular things take people's time and space that their presence is never really acknowledged but their absence is almost strongly felt. Just as how I have to open my gmail account every two hours to delete the only 5 spam messages I would have received in the last two hours but feel very dejected when the spam filter does a very good job on one given day.

But now with fingers pointed at me and echoes of 'where is my trash' ringing full and long on both ears I am under extreme pressure that the head does not spin any more junk and my fingers run to the delete button as soon as I muster to write a sentence or two. It is like, however hard you memorise the poem the previous night, when the teacher's polished cane points at you, all verses melt and flow out of the brain like raindrops seeking the sea.

Raindrops seeking the sea. That is a lousy similie. See, that is what pressure does and I am clearly wilting under pressure. But do you guys remember that girl who was in our batch and whose name was or is similie?

And to add salt to my wounds there was someone who has read some of my scribblings from a time when to write was to pick up a pen and draw impressions of what can achieved by the click of a button these days said that my writing lacks the passion from those days. Believe me, I am trying, it is just that the girls don't really get it.

To conclude, I am self-diagnosing that I have a writer's block. It is just that it is a big heavy block and someone has slammed it right onto my knuckles.

p.s. : The title ought to be 'can't pen under pressure', but you see, I am also afflicted by a very common attention mongering syndrome and vulgarity buys a lot of attention. It is also easy to tap 'e' twice then to search for an 'n' at the other end of the keyboard.

Cubicle change

2010-01-06T11:31:00.004Z

After the analyse-my-urine incident, I decided I have had enough and decided to get a job that did not have anything to do with analysing. So I consulted a dictionary for the antonym of analyse. The dictionary suggested that I get a job that did not have any thinking to do. That was around the time when Jinku said his manager did not have any masala in his head.

For those of you who are not familiar with the role of masala in the head; masala is the primary intelligence ingredient in an Indian head. The more masala in your head, the more intelligent you are. Getting masala in your head is not genetic but is by eating spicy food. Masala is infact the base that is used to make any spicy dish. So the more spicy food you eat, the more intelligent you become.

I am not making up a story here. Statistics shows that more people get into the IITs from Andra Pradesh than any other state in the world. And IITs are supposedly the toughest colleges to get into at an undergraduate level and requires high intelligence levels. It is also in Andra Pradesh that you get the spiciest cuisines in India (you infact have a nose-watering experience than a mouth-watering experience). If you can not piece-up the rest of the co-relation, you should crank up the spice a bit in your dinner tonight.

Anyway, Jinku is not the first person to curse that his manager did not have masala. So I decided that becoming a manager was the best way to get away from thinking and therefore analysing.

What resulted was a flurry of applications to all internal jobs that had a manager in the title. My project manager interview lasted close to 2 hours. I had decided earlier that I will steer the interview in such a way that the interviewer only asked me questions to which I knew the answers. But it was a disaster. Every time I tried to steer the interview, I was outmaneuvered. I mean I answered questions such as why do you want to do this job? (Should I have told him my analyse-my-urine story?), what are your long term career objectives? (I don't think I will ever get away from this question) and what experience do you have in project management (Well! I project managed to run a half marathon). I have no idea on what I answered and I was not thinking at all.

On the way back to my desk, ruing my fortunes, I realised that if the interview did not allow me to think, then there would certainly be absolutely no thinking to be done on the job. The perfect answer to my analyst problems!

The first day at the new job started with a meeting at 8. I presume the alarm did not go off. Half way to the office, I realised I had forgotten to take my laptop with me. I saved the embarrassment and went back to get it. But it is not until 10 minutes into the office I realised I left back the keys to the desk. I couldn't have asked for a better start!

Metamorphosis

2009-12-04T16:09:00.004Z

4th standard was a very special year. It was the year when I transformed from a boy to a man. Or atleast that was what I thought then. It was a year of changes. A year when I had to face many unpleasant challenges for the first time and also a year when many pleasant firsts occurred.

The new school in the new state did not provide with the luxury of skipping my second language classes. Instead, I was to face the most terrifying Tamil teacher I have ever had. She screamed at students, hit them with whatever she could get hold of and flung homework notebooks on to their faces.It did not help that I missed the previous two years of Tamil lessons. How I loved those Thursdays when I did not have Tamil lessons!

It was a year when I got my 'own' membership card at the local library. It saved me from the tyrannical Tamil teacher as I quickly learnt to read and write reading Siruvarmalar at the library. But more than anything, I loved the freedom of going to the library by myself and picking the book of my choice.

I wore my first analogue watch that year and the teachers asked us to bring fountain pens to school - the first thing that marked the men from the boys. A yellow belt at the Karate class also meant that I was the second strongest man in the world next to my black belt Karate master.

My freedom grew boundless when one afternoon my dad got me a top-of-the-line Hero Ranger bicycle after only 3 hours of pestering. At that time, owning a Hero Ranger was like owning a Ferrari now and owning a Street Cat was like owning a Lamborghini. Owning any other bicycle was just useless.

It was also the year when I swore at my science teacher on his face. A girl had sucked at him to give her mistake ridden test paper a 100 and my mistake less test paper a 99 so she could get the first rank. She got the first rank. Well, she was not a she actually. She was a he. But he deserves to be called a she, doesn't she?

Analyse this!

2009-12-03T14:00:00.004Z

Since the time I started to work for money, my job title has been an analyst. My job title changed several times in the last 4 years, but it always ended as some analyst. At first it felt nice to say I was an analyst than to recite the usual 'I am a software engineer'. However, I learnt only later that calling oneself an analyst has its own disadvantages.

First of all, when people ask what an analyst does, I always struggle to quantify my work in less than a 1000 words; by then the person who asks me the question is in deep sleep. You see, being an analyst, you do several things. And sometimes you do nothing. So after sometime, when I told people only the nothing part, they were surprised that I was getting paid for nothing.

And then one day, when a pretty girl asked me the usual 'So what do you do for a living?' question, I geared up to impress her with yet another 1000 word I am the king of the world speech and started with the 'I am an analyst' line. To my surprise the girl did not ask me the 'What does that mean?' question but instead dived into her handbag and gave me a bottle.

I took the bottle from her and asked 'What is this?'
'That's my urine sample. You said you were an analyst right? So could you analyse my urine and tell me if I have swine flu?'

Cough syrup for calf ache

2009-11-28T06:29:00.004Z

Kiran: So do you still train for the marathon that you are not going to complete?
me: yeah
Kiran: How is it coming?
me: Okay. But my calf muscles ache like hell
Kiran: Drink some cough syrup. That is what I do

Contraceptives for Climate Change

2009-11-10T13:28:00.003Z

I suggested to Boston that we go Banger racing. This is after his wonderful idea that running around Hyde Park with our tongues lunging out like dogs will fetch us dates. Poochi fell for it and took a train all the way from Milton Keynes. All we managed to get was cold stares from old women as we entered the tube with our smelly sweatshirts.

For those of you who do not know Boston’s roots, he is from the Stone Age. When Marty from Back to the Future once drove to the Stone Age, Boston accidentally transported himself to our age and that is how he is here. Although he has made substantial progress in his lifestyle, including riding a bicycle, he is yet to fully assimilate into our culture; which is why he hates motorcars, thinks internet robs him of his life and runs for hours together at a stretch.

Anyway, the evil influences of the internet got hold of his unsuspecting soul and he now believes that driving cars is bad for humanity, depleting our non-renewable energy resources, raising sea levels through global warming and causing pollution. So have many other unsuspecting souls been led to believe; which is why I am going to clear all your minds and tell you it is not true.

All humans must become petrol heads - If not for himself/herself but for world peace. If you looked at all the wars that have been waged in the last few decades, they have invariably been for oil (in the pretext of bringing democracy to the war stricken communities). So if we finish off all the oil as quickly as we can, we can end these wars and save millions of lives. (Will this concept bring me Nobel Prize? or should I have to be the president of USA to get one?)

How many of us do work today which can be postponed to tomorrow. I am sure only the quotation writers will raise their hands. So long as we have oil, we will use it sparingly and make incremental improvements in hybrids and the likes. But if there is no oil, we will do something out of sheer necessity.

Even if we did not find an alternative, it is good for general world health. The millions and millions of human beings succumbed into their current unhealthy lifestyles will come out of it and walk to offices instead of driving their 2km journeys. Yet another Nobel for that!

I am not asking everyone to be selfish and use all the available petrol and rob the future generations of the pleasures of roaring an internal combustion engine. I am only asking everyone to help them indulge in it. You may wonder how that is possible if we finish off all the oil.

I have come up with a new theory that will illustrate that all the oil that is burnt is not actually lost but just waiting to be reused.

If you remembered your Deepavali days (The Deepavalis when you woke up at 4 AM and fired crackers till midnight and not the ones where you sat in front of television all day), you will remember that there certainly was a couple of hours of rain on the day. The carbon from all the rockets and 1000 walahs we fire gets caught in the rain clouds and comes back down bringing the rain with it. By the same principle, all the carbon emissions we send out will accumulate and eventually come down with rain and settle as sediments. These sediments after a few hundred years will solidify or liquefy to become coal and petrol again. So by not using petrol optimally, we are breaking this cycle of forming new crude.

I understand your concern that more rains will increase the already rising sea levels. But won’t the rains be filled in the empty oil rigs that we have dug in the last 100 years? By the same token, even if we didn’t use petrol cars and used hydrogen hybrids (which combine hydrogen with the oxygen we breathe to make water and energy) will the water from these cars not increase sea levels? Atleast by acting on my advice, we will have only increased water levels, but if we used hydrogen cars not only will we have increased water levels but also decreased the total breathable oxygen available in the atmosphere.

For all you know, global warming and the subsequent rise in sea level may not be our fault at all. If you happened to use Wikipedia as your primary source for worldly knowledge, you will know that the sun's output varies with time, which scientists refer to as the 11 year solar cycle -sometimes the sun emits more heat and sometimes less. The current period could just be a period where the sun is working overtime.

Whether global warming is the sun’s fault or not, I believe the whole thing could have been prevented if there was general awareness among the people of the 60s to use contraceptives. If only we had less people to use what is left, we would not make any fuzz about the whole thing but instead be Banger racing in Olympic Games.

Making sense of it

2009-11-01T00:47:00.004Z

For the last few weeks I have been looking out for internal job openings within the company I work for. I am looking for a job with a title that says anything but an analyst. After 4 years of being an analyst, I have given up on trying to explain to people what an analyst does or more preciously what I do.

At this point I would like to state that rumours spread by people like Boston that all I do for a living is to go to office 3 days a week, pretend to work for 5 hours, get drunk by lunch and write blogs. This is unfounded and completely untrue. Boston is just jealous that he can not work at my efficiency levels.

Anyway, trying to explain what I do for a living is just as hard as it was trying to explain a shop keeper close to our house in Madurai why I went to study in Pilani.

Shop-keeper: So, I heard you have got into college. Where do you study now?
Me: Pilani
Shop-keeper: Oh Palani
Me: No, Pilani is in Rajasthan
Shop-keeper: That is a long way from here. Why? Didn't you have enough marks to get admission in one of the colleges in Madurai?
For the next 15 minutes I tried to explain to him that only kids who unexpectedly and accidentally score exceptionally high marks in the final school exams get to go to that far-off college. But he was convinced I could not get an admission in one of the local colleges.
Shop-keeper: So what do you study?
Me: M.Sc
Shop-keeper: So you couldn't even get engineering?

To cut the long story short, trying to explain my analyst role has only resulted in several agonising and confidence denting incidents.

And as I look out for openings, as a precaution, I have made a mental note not to go for jobs with female managers. Imagine the manager calling for a meeting with me and I say 'Should we get a room?'

After the 12 JDs

2009-11-01T00:38:00.003Z

I met someone at the bar now - not at the court of law, because I am single and have nothing to do with in-laws. Anyway she asked me for my birthday, I said the 23rd of May.

She: 'You can't be serious. I was just gonna say that. I swear. I had this hunch. You know my parents got married on the 23rd of May and my sister was born of the 23rd of May!!'

Me: I have a hunch too. Your sister's name must be Mary.

You know how the conversation proceeded from there...

Pigeons under the floodlight

2009-10-28T10:48:00.003Z

Over the years I have seen several pigeons fluttering around in day-night cricket matches played under floodlights. While I must have mouthed the cameraman to turn back to the match, I have always been short of asking the pigeons what the hell they were doing at this time of the night.

I now understand why. No, I have not been bit by a pigeon and I have not become pigeon-man. The bright sunny summer is gone now and in place darkness and gloom have encircled the place I live. To add to the eeriness, I, from time to time, add my bit of background music with the clattering of my teeth.

But that aside,the clocks are moved back an hour in winter. Some call it day light saving or something like that while many intellectual men like me suspect that the real reason is behind the Big Ben that needs a battery change. There is no advantage changing the clocks because it is dark all through the day anyway - it is dark when you wake up, it is dark when you go to office and it is dark when you come back from office. The only time you see sunlight is on the weekends.

Although the time change seems to have done nothing to the natives, it is causing havoc to my system. For instance, I am waking up at 3AM when logically I should be waking up at 5AM even with the time change. I am hungry for dinner at 5PM but don't feel sleepy until 11PM like usual. I tried to convince my manager that I don't work night-shifts and so will come to office only when there is sunlight. He can't seem to get my logic.

My inventive mind is planning to create artificial daylight in my own little room with the sodium vapour street lamp from the next street. There is some planning to be done to get it materialised. I have to steal the lamp and bring it home, hammer it on to the 6 inch wall that separates my room from my neighbours' and draw power from them to keep the lamp running 12 hours a day.

But getting back to the pigeons, I now sympathise with the pigeons for having to battle out blinding floodlights when they are supposed to be making out with pigeons of the opposite sex.

May be I should help the pigeons. I should write a note to PETA that day-night cricket is preventing Pigeon Ecology Thriving Activities and use the pigeons to deliver my message. But I am afraid PETA will sue the pigeons for using PETA's acronym without paying them license fees.

Amidst all this world ending problems I realised that the only way I can continue to watch cricket happening in India because of the time differences is when there are day-night matches. Now that is a bigger world ending problem.

So there is now a slight change in policy. I suggest that we catch all these menacing pigeons that distract us from the game, fry them, sell them and make money out of it. I suggest we call the venture KFP - Karumathur Fried Pigeons. The world needs such bright ideas during these testing recession times.

Cross-belt Land

2009-10-16T14:02:00.000+01:00

When Jinku and I first started to work for money, we shared a 1 bedroom house in the heart of a slum in Chennai. For weeks none of our colleagues knew where we lived. And then came the rains that flooded the whole of Chennai. Jinku would tuck his pants upto his knees and hold his shoes in his hands while I rode my motorcycle to drop him at the main road. This continued until my motorcycle's engine was filled with water. And then I had to go on my first overseas trip. Or atleast that was what we told our super sweet landlord's family to get out of the place.

We found yet another one bed room flat. But this time in the second floor so no flood would do anything to us. But unfortunately, we found a flat in the heart of cross-belt land - west mampalam.

West mampalam can be a great or a lousy place to live in; depending on your mind set. But the original inhabitants of that land had certain fixed notions. Such as - Unmarried men are evil (Unmarried non-cross-belts were more evil). Unmarried men eyed all women in the family that included daughters, wives and mothers - even if the wives were 55 year olds and the mothers 85 year olds. Unmarried men smoked cigarettes from the balconies and dropped ash on alpha male cross-belts' bald heads seriously pondering over a cure for cancer. Unmarried men drank beer and puked in other people's door mats.

We did not know all this background and were surprised for the first one month when everyone in the flat scattered like flies whereever and whenever we walked. It took a while to realise noone spoke to us either. No one used lifts when we used it.

But like I said, it can be a great place or a lousy place depending on what you wanted it to be. We wanted it to be a great place. And it was a great place. We felt like tigers in a herd of deer as everyone scampered for their lives as we walked around the place. We felt like Maharajas as people stuck to lift walls like lizards or sneaked out of lifts to let us ride up to our floor. We had our occasional fun as well as we walked as close as possible to our next door neighbour as he walked home from office. We could have added fuel to fire by striking a conversation with their wives, but we were concerned the husbands' heads would turn so hot that we could fry our eggs on top of it. Obviously, we didn't want eggs fried from used coconut oil.

Ring a bell

2009-09-29T13:42:00.002+01:00

Before the time of cellphones, we had a landline phone in our home. It was quite handy. It provided midnight updates on leaked question papers and helped plan mid day movies after bunking school. I could see from my mum's body language that she was not convinced with the new device; especially when girls called her son. She managed to find out even if the girls spoke in a man-ish voice.

And then came cellphones. You had to buy one than face the indignation from the voices that echoed 'So you don't have a cellphone?'

My first cellphone was the legendary blue brick. It was the most useful cellphone I have had. My mom endlessly played the snake game and my sister threatened to break my head with it if I didn't share my pocket money with her. I, on the other hand, kept staring at it for months, waiting for it to ring. It taught me patience.

Many years later, cellphones have only become useless. They no longer are large, heavy and strong. So I can't moonlight anymore as a burglar armed with a cellphone and threaten people. I can no longer call pretty girls under the pretext of having forgotten my home number and so called them to ask if they remembered it by any chance.

On contrary, I overheard a couple of 142+ IQ women discuss that cellphones are nature's devices to counter the epidermic called men. They said cellphones emanate certain magic rays that kill men's 'little armies' which help them make more men. Infact, they said it is a grand design that began in the 17th century when the English travelled to most parts of the world. Of the many things that the English took with them, long pants with pockets was one of them. It took the English two and half centuries to make the whole world wear pants. Soon came the cellphones and the cellphones went into men's pockets. The rest is yet to be seen.

As I walk along the corridor with my personal phone in my left pocket and my office phone in my right pocket, I wonder if women are hand in glove with nature. Or why would they buy pouches and handbags for their cellphones inspite of wearing pants? I bet they already have an underground secret cloning facility to keep them multiplied.

Kiran in Kashmir

2009-09-23T17:28:00.005+01:00

For a while now, I have been writing just about myself. That was because I was trying to mind my own business. But now, Kiran is going to Kashmir and what a waste this blog would be if I didn't let the world know that Kiran will be in Kashmir.

So why is Kiran going to Kashmir? Because Kiran wants to go and live in Australia. While many may wonder what madness prompted him to travel from Kerala to Kashmir to reach Australia, those who are familiar with Kiran will understand that there will be some method in his madness.

Kiran always looks to follow someone in life. For example, in exams, he tries to write the exact same answers as the person in front of him. So now he wanted to find someone who had recently relocated abroad and do the same things he/she did that took him or her out of the country.

I was one of them. So he decided to study all the things I did in the last one year before I left. The thing that stuck to him most was my road trip to Goa earlier in the year. He knew that a road trip to Goa will take him to England, so he wanted to go somewhere far enough to be ensured to go to Australia. The farthest he could imagine was Kashmir. So Kiran is roadtripping to Kashmir.

Kashmir always brought a nationalistic fervour in Kiran. So he wanted to travel to Kashmir in a way that will tell the world he is a Mallu. So Kiran is hiring an Omni; one way. On his way back he plans to glide down to India Gate in New Delhi with his umbrella. Reasons later.

On the way to Kashmir, he is also dropping in at Sivakasi to pick up as many fire crackers as he can. He is tired of cowering at every person who has a back pack since the Bombay shootout. So he plans to single-handedly destroy all the terrorists in Kashmir with the fire crackers. He has watched Gadar 5 times and so has adequate knowledge to single-handedly finish the job.

Kiran has also seen many English movies as backup for Plan B. In these movies, the victorious soldiers always parachuted to the city; which is why he wants to glide down to India Gate with his umbrella for his Param Vir Chakra. He has not found any place yet that sells cheap parachutes. So if you know of some place in Kerala, please contact Kiran and help him in his nationalistic cause.

But something was missing in the whole plan. If Kiran wanted to go to Australia, Nitin will also want to go to Australia; ofcourse without incurring any cost to himself. So I rang up Nitin and asked him what he was upto. He is removing the spare tyre in the Omni's boot and coiling in instead.

Hair styling

2009-09-14T19:50:00.007+01:00

Cutting your own hair is not such a good idea; especially on a Sunday evening when all barber shops in your town are closed. But I had a reason to cut my own hair. A haircut costs £35 - the money that Rajinikant's hair stylist earns in a month. So I decided to take the matter into my own hands.

I now understand why priests in temples have one small bunch of hair at the top of their heads that is longer than the rest and why some people wear turbans. Cutting your own hair does not always end with the desired result.

The good thing about cutting your own hair is that by the time you are finished with the cutting (which is by the time there is no hair left to cut) you would have styled yourself with 9 different hair-dos. The not-so-good-thing is that the 10th hair-do, which is the final one, always looks the same. It looks exactly like what it would look if you put your head into a burrow full of hungry rats that have not been fed for 13 days.

It will be a very defining moment when I meet my colleagues in the office tomorrow. If they have a laugh at it, I can always blame in on recession and who knows, they could pool in some money for my next hair-cut. But if they like it, then I could have a weekend vocation. I should even think of applying for a patent for my fork cut and retire with all the royalty money I will get from the franchising.

Patent-pending fork cut

If you too are thinking of starting your own hair styling brand, I must warn you that it is not such an easy job. Not only does it take 3 hours to complete, but for the next 3 months nothing would grow on your head - not even dandruff. You have to be ambidextrous; to be able to handle a pair of scissors on your left hand while you operate the hair trimmer on the right. Did I mention that the hair you cut sticks to anything and everything 5 feet around you? Getting rid of it is not easy. But I have a solution. You can wash it down your drain, if you didn't mind your hair clogging your entire street's drainage system.

All barbers cut hair. But they never always end up with patent pending hairstyles. That is because they do not know what I know - yet another of my accidental discoveries.

Half my hair was turning white. While I could fool the Europeans that one of my parents was Finnish and the other Indian; which is why half my hair is white and the other half is black, these second generation Indians in the UK don't believe what I say.

When you have an issue that needs attention, ignore it. When you like to make an issue out of nothing, call your mum for advice. ' Use parachute. How you do think Asian paints make their black paint?'

So that is the secret formula. Every drug has its own side effects. My secret formula has its own. Instead of the 5 feet radius, your hair sticks to a 10 feet radius, and your face, and your shirt, and the mirror, and the trimmer.

Post hair cut question: Are hair trimmers water proof? The mess was so much, that I put the trimmer in a bucket of water mixed with Pantene shampoo to wash off the hair. I am sure they are. Would they have thought about guys like me when they make hair trimmers?

cats, cows & karma

2009-09-07T14:42:00.004+01:00

A wise man once told me that the brain can process or hold only a certain amount of data and this is an independent constant for each individual. That is why some women are able to hold on to information that is 20 years old and other men are unable to simultaneously munch their breakfasts while watching two and half men. But the individual constant is a fixed entity for each individual. That is, the sum of the total amount of data one can hold on to one's head and the total amount of processing the head can do is a constant at one particular instant. My abysmal record at remembering names should indicate something to you all about my brain.

The law applies to me but with a clause. That is, the constant is not restricted to the head but to the whole body. Which explains why I get my blog ideas when my IQ is drained through my ears in meetings at the office or when I am contributing my humble bit to global warming from the toilet.

Last Saturday, I had an English breakfast, a Japanese lunch and an Italian dinner. I did not know the English, the Japanese and the Italians did not get along very well and no sooner there was a world war. The bloodbath and destruction caused led to my spending several hours in the closed confines on my closet. As my body got rid of the warring parties and more of itself, it had more processing power than it had had in a long time; which led to the serendipitous discovery of the truth behind karma and rebirth.

According to version 8 and later versions of Hinduism, every man and woman will have 9 lives to live. Depending on what each one does in each of these lives, one will be either be promoted or demoted in the food cycle (Applies only to Hinduism believing Hindus). So if you did certain things you can keep your human status and eat chicken. However, if you did other things, you will be demoted to a chicken and other humans will eat you. By the time you complete your allotted 9 lives, all your parts would have worn out. So you are sent to a place popularly known as the hell where you will be thrown into a sea of fire to be melted and reprocessed along with other people who have completed their 9 lives. This new molten people will be used to generate more brand-new 9-life species.

This is something that many people already know. But what they do not know is that you do not die in one life to go to another. Rajini almost spilt the beans in one of the songs in Baasha when he speaks about dividing one's life in years of 8. What really happens is that there are 9 facets of life and each of these lasts for 8 years (which explains the cumulative average lifespan of species at 72 years). The allegory to dogs or cats or cows or chicken is only what you closest resemble to in each of these facets.

The period when you are shit scared about anything and everything is when you are a chicken, from where comes the expression 'you are such a chicken'.

The period when you don't do any work but sit and shit in the same place and keep eating all day is when you are a domesticated cow in a cowshed.

The period of life when you graze around women is when you are a goat. It is likely for the grazers develop facial hair growth, especially under the chin during this period.

The period when no amount of humiliation would dislodge you is when you are a buffalo.

The period after you wake up in a stranger's apartment with 2 teeth missing after a 12 Jack Daniels night and you swear never to drink again is when you are a camel.

The period when you are unsure of what you want to say to people and so just hang around nervously is when you are a cat. Thus the expression 'cat on the wall'.

The period when you carry your girlfriends' shopping bags while she shops and shops; and shops is when you are a mule.

The period when mid-life crisis engulfs you and you spend all your night chatting with 30 year-old truck drivers masquerading as 18 year old damsels is when you are an owl.

The period when you are too old to walk that when you cross a zebra crossing you hold up the traffic for a mile is when you are a snail.

The period when you have posted close to 100 such crappy posts is when you have ceased all your usefulness and are going to hell.

Career plan

2009-09-03T17:56:00.012+01:00

Year: 2007
Time: Appraisal time
Manager: So Raja, you are a bright and intelligent kid. Obviously you would like to move up the corporate ladder. And me being your line manager, I have an obligation to help you chart a career path. To help me do that, could you tell me what you would like to do in 5 year's time?
raja: I don't know. I have not thought about it.

Year: 2008
Time: Appraisal time
Manager: So have you had a chance to think about your career aspirations in the last one year?
raja: I did think about it and I could not arrive at anything.

Year: 2009
Time: Appraisal time
Manager: Now you have come to a point where you will have to say something about what you want to do with your career
raja: Give me 6 months. I will come up with something

And so now, I have the arduous task of finding out what I would like to do with my career. If I could not have found an answer in 3 years, I do not think I will be able to bring forth something in 6 months. Nevertheless, I will list out the options I have and try to arrive at what is best for me.

My manager can not blame me for not proactively thinking about my career. I infact thought about it quite early in my life. When I was small I wanted to be a farmer. Not just that. I wanted to be the best farmer in the world. So I bought a potted plant and tried to grow it as best as I could. I learnt from my biology classes that plants work in the morning and sleep in the night. But I wanted my plant to work 24 hours. So I bought a carton of RedBull and made it drink every drop of it. The result...

My experimental plant on steroids

I concluded that plant nutrition probably was not my forte. So I turned onto nutrition for human beings. I worked to prepare my own magic portion that will provide me infinite strength and put Obelix to shame. I noticed that whenever I refused to eat or drink something, my parents told me the goodness of that particular food or drink. Some made you grow taller, some made you stronger, some gave you x-ray vision, and the list went on and on. So one afternoon, when my parents were away, I managed to gather all those foods and drinks, mix them in a pot and boil them to a paste. I made small tablets out of them. I had a friend who was anxious to become superman before I did; so he had a go at the tablets before I did. I think it is unnecessary to explain that it didn't go very well.

Superman teeth

One Thursday afternoon, I was watching Forrest Gump when it struck that I could grow shrimps like Forrest. But noone eats shrimps in India. All people eat is rice, chicken and fish fry from road side stalls. That was my big idea. I could grow fish and become a millionaire. My first attempt at fish culture failed as all my fish grew legs and turned to tadpoles and jumped out of my Nutramul pond. If only people ate tadpoles...

A few years later, I realised that my dad worked 5 days a week all round the year. He never had quarterly, half yearly or annual holidays to go fishing or to climb trees or to play hide and seek. I did not want to grow up and work 5 days a week all round the year. So I sat up thinking about jobs that will provide me with quarterly, half yearly and annual holidays. Teacher! I was going to be a teacher. And like usual, the difficulties seeped into my head later. What if the students asked me questions? Could I say ' I will leave that in choice' There was also this moral obligation for the future. If an interviewer asked me what electromagnetic theory is, I would very fluently answer that it is a theory that combines electric theory and magnetic theory in an effort to save writing time in exams. But if I taught that, our future generations will not be able to steal jobs from America.

The answering questions problem arises only if I thought students subjects that had difficult questions. What if I thought easy subjects with easy answers, such as drawing? But showing my drawing exam papers from school is never going to get me a drawing teacher job especially when I have managed to pass only half my drawing tests, and that too just barely.

You are asked questions only if you teach. But if you did something, you can always pretend that you are busy doing stuff and get away with it. Carpentry can be one where I can do stuff such as unnecessarily shaving wood and pretend to be busy! But my carpentry experiences from college are not very encouraging. I once dropped a vernier caliper into a lathe machine and proved that vernier calipers could be sheared up to 0.1 millimeters. I also managed to nail the wooden tray I was making into the working table. If I could nail the tray, I could very well nail my hands and that will not be a pretty sight.

I can't be a computer engineer as I have proved enough number of times that I do not have the IQ to do programming. Nor do I want to be a market researcher. There is no challenge in the job when you have already researched the entire ether-world. I could be an actor if not for the girls that will throng me. I also hate to dance shirt-less on snow capped mountains.

In the last 6 months, I have become a wonderful cook. More and more people have been showering accolades on my cooking skills and less and less people have been running to the bathroom. But cooking is a dangerous sport. I have to live every day of my life with fire, smoke and knives and I end up in tears half the days. So me being a peace-loving person, I think I will have to pass that on.

My cooking has become so awesome that one of my guests didn't even spare the spoon

Moving on to less dangerous sports, I could be a marathoner. It is easier to take this up as I already have a plan to take on the marathon. But I am not going to be the best in the sport. I will blame it on my being a pure bred Dravidian. If I were an Aryan (pure-bred or mixed) I would have been larger than what I am now and larger men have longer legs. So if I took 4 steps to cover 10 feet now, I would do that in 2 steps with my Aryan legs. So all Aryan runners will easily surpass me and I won't be the best in business. There is no point in doing something if you are not the best at it.

Which brings me to where I was 3 years ago. My appraisal is in a year from now. So I can think of it then. I think I could be a procrastinator.

Red-dy Gar-u

2009-09-02T11:29:00.002+01:00

When I was 6, I wanted to be an automobile engineer. I imagined that when I grew up I would build cars and jeeps and the entire nation would run on my 'V' badged super cars. As preparation to my future, I made my parents buy as many miniature cars as the number of outings we took - even if the outing was to the next street grocery shop.

At 16, when hormones worked overtime, my preferences changed and I decided to be a taxi. Like when I was 6, I wanted to prepare for it. So when my parents bought their first 800 like many other Indians, I sneaked the car out as often as I can. After a few initial bumps and scraps I learnt to drive in quick time. I had a good father who rivaled and sometimes surpassed me dumping the car that we cancelled each others' damages. Mum did not know our deal.

Soon I realised that being a taxi driver is not such a good job. Thanks to television, I was enlightened that the job of taxi drivers also had other duties such as buying vegetables, picking up the ironed clothes from the iron-man and washing dishes. The first two were acceptable; but washing dishes? You know how I cringe to touch water. So to soak my hands entirely in a pool of water was not something I could do for the driving job.

My car building plan was still at the back of my head. But I dropped it when I was in my second year of college. I had solid reasons. I had to complete a course called Mechanics of Solids which is fundamental for mechanical engineers. And usually mechanical engineers specialised to become automobile engineers who made cars. But midway through the course I realised that all I was making in the course was zeros. By the looks of it, I could only make circular tyres from the zeros. An engine-less car is no good. So I dropped the plan as I was intelligent enough to know when to give up.

Now, at 26, the mad rush for cars resurfaced again a few weeks ago - but this time to own a car. So I bought one with Jinku's money. I was happy that I could make atleast one part of my car dreams come true, but there were some practical niggles.

First, the UK rules are not as good as Indian rules. In the UK, I am not allowed to park anywhere I want to. Not just that, I have to pay money to park MY car! And; I have to remove the car in less than 2 hours in most places. What a scam. Even when I pay money, I don't get value for the money. I can not park the car the way I want to. I will have to reverse park and parallel park in many places. Why are the British so keen on inserting their cars between other cars? Don't they know it is vulgar to do so in public in many cultures and Britain being a multicultural country must spare a thought for foreigners from other cultures? But the best of all British queerness is that they have speed cameras to spot you if you drove fast. The primary use of a car is to travel from point A to point B as quickly as possible. So what sense does it make to limit your speed?

It is not just the road rules. Buying a car is not just buying a car. One has to get a car insurance which is half the price of the car and no sane man will find logic in it. Even if I crashed my car once every 3 years, instead of just the repairs that the insurance company pays for, will I be not able to buy a new car if I saved up the money I used to insure the car? There is more madness. But I have to stop right here as my tom-tom is alerting me of a security camera watching me rubbishing British rules. But before runaway, come to think of it, what use are the speed cameras when tom-toms know where exactly the cameras are located and warn you a mile before the cameras spot you!

After-dark

2009-08-27T08:32:00.002+01:00

Nitin: Why do parents insist that small children sleep early?
Kiran: So they can watch after-dark movies without interruptions

Independence Day

2009-08-21T16:30:00.005+01:00

My rice-eating, coffee-drinking, sleep-at-9-wake-up-at-6 mum, who until a point in her life thought Madurai was the farthest point on earth that human beings could travel to, visited me earlier this month. Given the short notice of her trip, she did not have enough time to see enough star movies to perk up her English. So she paid for my sister's expenses and brought her along.

'Mum, you could have brought dad along'
'I could have. But what will I do if someone talks to me in the washroom. Though your dad would have loved to take a peek into the ladies room, I am not sure I will approve of it. And so I chose your sister. We have paid so much of money to get her to college and we should be able to extract at least something out of her, shouldn't we?'
'But, is it fair to dad?'
'I was fair. I extended him an invitation as long as he was ready to manage his own expenses.'

And so my mum and sis came to the UK.

Ever since there has been some sun here, there has been a flurry of Indian mums visiting sons in the UK. And mums always looked the same. They went around draped in their sarees and their best necklaces, packed lunches wherever they went, never spoke to anyone non-Indian, became experts in multiplication table 8 as they converted every pound they spent to rupees and mentally made notes to get their sons married as quickly as possible to avoid the risk of short skirted English women preying on their sons. I expected my mum to do the same. No offense, it is just natural isn't it. So as a precaution, I warned friends coming home for free food not to bring free drinks. But; I was in for a big surprise.

In just about a week, while I cooked for them at home, they painted the town red in the trendiest of skirts, drank £5 coffees at breakfast, 10, lunch, 4 and dinner, ate with knifes and forks, sipped coke after meals and managed intriguing conversations with complete strangers. They impressed upon so much that shop keepers gave them gifts for free, guides took extra time to explain the merciless and brutal annals of English history, waiters helped pick from the choice of menus and passer-bys guided them to places to where they knew the route already.

There is only one person I have ever known who could manage to do all that and still walk around nonchalantly - My grandma. I wonder if my mum took quick lessons from her mother-in-law just before she left.

My grandmother can hardly read or write. But take her to an expensive hotel, she will seat herself in the lounge, pick up an English (only English) newspaper and skim through for 15 minutes and tell you all the 'stories' of the day for the next 30 minutes. She has this innate ability of transforming pictures to stories, which is well complemented by her expansive knowledge of all Indian and American politicians and their life histories. While most of her friends inked their thumbs for signatures, she trained herself to hold a ball-point pen. She taught herself just what was necessary. You talk to her in English, she will juggle around with the 13 English words that she knows and trick you into believing she has a masters in the language. My uncle took her on a plane for the first time recently and unlike many people who have nervous jitters she carried herself very well that all she could come up with was ask the air-hostess if she could have the window seat. Give her a chop-stick, she will look at you eat and learn to do just the same before you realise she is using you as her teacher. She tips workers, gifts grand-kids, still goes out with her friends, demands her allowance and above all that carries herself like no one I have ever seen.

I was happy for my mum to have inherited a lot from her mother-in-law. I had my own fringe benefits. But everything comes at a cost. And entertaining two women is not very cheap. I spent my month's wages in the two weeks they stayed with me. But I still enjoyed their company. So please believe me when I say it was only coincidence and that I did not have any ulterior motives when I waved them good bye at the airport on the Independence day.

Unrelated post-airport Independence day event: On seeing the number of Independence day related scribblings on facebook, I decided to do my bit on that day. So I went up to the national flag that hangs in my room, saluted at it and tried to sing the national anthem. Miserably for me, I had to hum a couple of lines in between. That is what happens when you are not the tallest in your 5th standard class but still stand at the back for the school assembly and hum at long-legged 8th standard beauties while the national anthem is on.

Shark smooching & the subsequent serendipity

2009-08-04T22:39:00.006+01:00

When I was a little boy I wanted to build a zoo in my house so I could open it for visitors for a fee. My grandiose plans also had an aquarium. So I brought home a dozen baby fish from a neighbouring river. But, in a week or two, the fish grew legs, turned into frogs, jumped out of the Nutramul bottle pond and ran into all corners of the house. My mum was okay only until the fish remained in water and was not particularly happy for them to leap around the dining table. So I had to dismantle my zoo. I could not find any logic in dismantling the entire zoo, but I understood only much later in life that women's minds work in un-understandable ways.

It also meant that I did not visit an aquarium. So I was happy when I knew I was going to be traveling in a train that would go underwater. I have always wanted to see sharks smiling meekly for pictures through glass windows in aquariums. But what a disappointment again - The Eurostar train connecting London and Paris had glass windows, but the tunnel through which the train passed through didn't. So I didn't know if I passed through the sea or the train just went round and round London and told me it was Paris at the end of the journey. My doubts doubled when I didn't understand a word of what they spoke. It was nothing like the French I was taught at school.

My doubts subsided when everyone around me started taking pictures of me. I have read somewhere, probably in wikipedia, that the French are great admirers of fashion and beauty and once they took pictures of me I could confirm that I was atleast in some part of France.

I took pictures of them while they took pictures of me

But what is the point in being in the limelight when the one most important thing that you based your trip on isn't to be seen? But just as Johny Bravo said to me, you lose some to gain some, so I did find something worthwhile in France.

All his life, a friend of mine has been searching for an ultimate truth - the truth that will culminate all knowledge and quest. He did not know what that ultimate truth was, or where he could find it or why he was looking for one. But he was looking for it and he knew the moment he saw it, he will know it was what he was looking for. He also told me that if I saw it before him, I will recognise too. And I think I did just that and am sure all shameless but honest blokes will agree with my discovery.

Mr. Anderson...

2009-07-30T20:27:00.006+01:00

It was my 12th standard board examinations. I knew I had every chance of maxing my computer science test. But when the results came in, I was 11 marks short. That changed my life. If I had scored a full, I would have built a Sandcastle becoming the greatest computer hacker in the world and as a consequence I would have enrolled myself into computer engineering.

So I went on to study Chemical engineering and Physics and learnt some valuable lessons for life; one of which was life lesson 2.

Life lesson 2: Physics in college is not the same as physics in school. Generalising the rule: The subjects that you thought you liked and were good at, at school will be the subjects that will make your life miserable at college and thus the subjects you will come to dislike.

Computer programming turned out to be one of them. It will be an understatement if I said I was hopeless. I never made double digit marks, could never write one error-less line of code (One instructor remarked in an open book test that if I had opened the book during the test, I could have atleast got one basic line correct. I started off the program with an studio.h instead of stdio.h. Studio seemed logical to me than the stdio gibberish.) and at most times managed to make the default marks for attending the test.

Now, here is a confession. Many young and attractive married women have been asking me how an intelligent, gifted, sensitive and capable man such as I am never had a girlfriend at college.

Because I was having such a good time entertaining everyone around me at the computer lab with my ingenious logic and computer vocabulary, some guys who were jealous of me printed several copies of my programs and distributed them among the ladies.

If you can not write programs that can not run or atleast amble, you don't get a job. If you didn't get a job you don't have money. If you didn't have money you don't have me.

And so I didn't have a girlfriend till the end of the second year and therefore I didn't have a girlfriend all through college. But what about my 3rd, 4th and 5th years? Don't come to a conclusion until you have understood life lesson 127.

Life lesson 127: All women you desire are taken before the end of second year of college.

Later that year, word spread that someone had hacked into the university network and went to places never gone before, seen things never seen before and touched things never touched before. In a matter of hours there was a Robin Hood, a Mr. Anderson and a William Wallace; all simmering in one body - mine. I was the world's best hacker I would have dreamed about. I received more than 700 love emails in the most exquisite and gratifying language I have ever seen women write.

My account was seized. My activities were monitored. I was bullied to submit in closed room interrogations. My weekly long distance telephone calls with my parents were tapped. But they couldn't move a muscle in me. They were all exasperated and almost given up when one genius in the group had the brains to look at my computer programming test marks. None about nine. They let me free.

Life lesson 1983: Everything happens for the good

It was then I decided I will no longer have anything to do with software. And so for four years since I started work, I managed to hide myself in power points and spreadsheets until a few days ago.

BB: So Raja, you are the best man around here for numbers and spreadsheets. We would like to built an excel based tool that will be programmed to turn all our bad businesses to good and good businesses to better. And I would like you to work on it.

Well, they say life is a circle! Should that be my life lesson 0?

BB* - Boss's Boss

Insider view

2009-07-25T03:24:00.005+01:00

I had great respect for guys who said, 'Don't judge people by the outside, look inside', until it dawned to me after many years what they really meant ;) The respect has now turned to adulation.

Gun culture

2009-07-23T15:27:00.014+01:00

A Word of caution: I have been diagnosed as suffering from gender insensitivity. Therefore, the content below might seem vulgar to readers suffering from gender hypersensitivity. I caution those readers to stop reading the post right away.On the other hand, if you are suffering from generosity, please email me your bank account details, so I can use your money to treat my condition.

It was my first day in the UK and I went to the office bathroom for a leak. No sooner than I went inside, I heard gunshots that I had to crouch and take cover under the sink. It seemed like a battlefield with ammunition hurtled relentlessly. I ran out and dialed 100 to call the police. 'Adyar Police station'. Only then I realised that you can not dial 100 to call British police.

Later that afternoon, at lunch, I understood why there was gunfire in the toilet. Britishers eat large portions of meat, particularly cows and pigs. If you are a one-movie-a-day person you might have seen Mangal Pandey. The movie shows British bullet cartridges made out of cow skin and pig fat. If those small bullets, when fired,can make such ear deafening noise that resonates for miles, imagine what these large portions of meat could do.

It is fortunate that many Indians are vegetarians. If the 1.2 billion and growing population was meat eating, we could be firing so loudly that our neighbouring countries could think we are on a war with them and throw nuclear bombs at us. But I have been concerned for some time that many are turning into non-vegetarians; which is why I moved countries. I already look mutated and do not want to aggravate it any further with nuclear exposure. But that's not the only reason why I moved homes. India has tripled its population in the last 50 years. And if we grow at this rate, one day the ground beneath India might give in and we would all make our way to the centre of the earth and be burnt like roasted chicken.

p.s.: Chuchi's facebook wall said a minute ago that there was a tremor in Bangalore, so says Thekri. I am convinced it's not an earthquake but it is the ground beneath that is cracking up.

The General & her Prisoner of War

2009-07-20T14:38:00.011+01:00

I went on a trekking trip last Saturday with a friend. We eventually reached a village called Shere (pronounced Shear) after playing lost and found in the woods for 6 hours. 6 hours is a long time. Especially for my bladder. Especially when it was holding the 12 JDs I drank the previous night. The JD had misplaced priorities. Instead of working on my head it was working down there and I had to get rid of it.

After 3 hours of arduous battle I let go of it with a smiling face. I have acquired the habit of posing for pictures these days and I was sure there was some hidden security camera relishing my act.

Shy Eyes (that is her name translated into English) called me disgusting. How can it be disgusting? Rather, it is disgruntling to me. I water the plants but they still ask me to pay at the supermarket for the fruits the plants bear.

Not wanting to offend her anymore (she had the map and the money) I tried to entertain her with some witty jokes I stole from some of the blogs I read. She asked me to stop talking and walk quietly or she would leave me stranded in the woods. I think the blogs I read are not very witty or clever. If I had read Hansel and Gretel instead, I would have brought a bag full of pebbles with me.

Unable to do anything about my situation, I tried to keep quiet and follow her until civilisation. I managed to keep my mouth shut by sticking my upper and lower front teeth with the chewing gum she offered me a while ago. But she did not offer me anything to keep my brain shut. So my brain continued to rattle the usual nonstop nonsense, some of which are below.

1. Why should I be silent to observe nature? Every right comes with a responsibility. If I have the right to observe nature, is it not my responsibility to let nature observe me? How will it observe me if I was quiet? Or am I not part of nature? I am definitely going to hunt squirrels and wear itchy leaf underwear for coming up with this.

2. If she left me stranded, and I called Shaktimaan, will he come here to rescue me? Or is his jurisdiction only within the coverage area of Doordarshan? If so who is responsible for the UK? James Bond? James Bond will not help me as I have been calling myself James Bond when I answer the phone these days and he is mad at me. That leaves me with Austin Powers. But has he returned from the 70s with his mojo? Wish I knew what happened to him. I should not have slept in the second half of the movie.

3. The earth rotates at an angle. All these years, I have lived close to the equator for the angle to have any effect on me and things around me. But now that I live close to the pole, the tilt should have an effect. Will that mean the uphill climb now will be a downhill slope in winter?

4. Are bubble gums biodegradable?

5. Most women I know tell me that the female species is a superior species to men. I grudgingly agree. But why does a superior species always want to mate an inferior species and make babies? Are they not bringing down the intelligence of the offspring by half? So if that half life continued for generations, will there not be a time when the male and female species be equally intelligent? Or stupid? I think the English are approaching that phase. Look at their spellings and you will understand. Shere (Shear), Gloucestershire (Glostersher), Edinburgh (Edinburah)...

I write anymore than this I am going to be hack-saw-ed. But why do people berate me for writing such trash but continue to read them anyway.

Project managing a half marathon

2009-07-15T12:57:00.003+01:00

'So Raja, the project management course that I sent you to. Was it useful?'
'Very much.'
'Why don't you brief the team this Friday on what you learnt, so it will be a refresher for a lot of them?'

Where did my manager come from? Does he not know that courses are attended to use up department budget and not to learn something. The manager can tell the management the money given to him was all well spent so he could get more money next year (the more budget the manager has the more commanding his position is in the authority matrix) while I get free lunch and drinks for attending the course.

Back at my desk, I thought really hard to see if anything I do is ever close to project management or can be put into the frames of project management. Luckily, I had one.

Earlier in the previous evening: Ha ha, you are going to run a half marathon!! I bet you can not do that.

So that will be the project that I will manage. I will run a half marathon.

(I don't really remember where I left my course material, so I do not expect to follow all the steps one would in real project management. In between making rubber band bullets, playing sudoku and all the chattering my ears randomly picked up a few terms in the class which I will use here extensively and interchangeably.)

Project Statement: Run a half marathon

Terms of Reference: (what, where, who, which, how, when)

What am I going to do? - Run a half marathon
Who will run? I will run
How am I going to do? - That is my job. I will figure it out
When should I complete? - Before winter. (Running in winter means buying special winter running clothes. That costs money. So I save running in the summer. (This is an example of some of the best practices of project management: Save where you can))
How long should I take to complete the marathon? Nobody told me how long I should take. So I will assume I can take as long as I want as long as I complete before end of summer.
How much should the whole exercise cost? - It should not cost you more than your salary because you have no other means of income.
Where will I run? Run in the gym

What was not defined was how many times I could stop and how long my stoppage between runs could be. So I have decided to run one kilometer everyday in the next 22 days and complete my half marathon.

My budget:£ 228

Running shoes £ 80
Running t-shirt £ 15
Running shorts £ 15
Running underwear £ 8 (I figured out that I will have to wear a running underwear as I live in the UK. UK has more security cameras than people and I will not be surprised if there is a camera at the base of the treadmill.)
Pre-run meal 22 X £ 2
Post-run pizza 22 X £ 3 (Motivation is key to success. Unless I am motivated with a pizza at the end of the run I will not be able to get through the whole distance)

Stakeholders:

Get to know my stakeholders:

High influence - high support: Boston: 'Right-o'. He has completed 2 full marathons and always complains about his aching leg when he finishes the race. He comes from the stone age. He has no Internet connection and nowhere to live. There is rumour that he currently lives in his cubicle.

High support - low influence: David: 'Hey, how you going!'. David is my housemate. We eat pizzas together. He will be more than happy if I tell him our meal every evening is going to be a pizza for the next 22 days. I intend to give him a 2% stake in 'lazy-man inventions'. He invented the idea of piling up used plates and dishes until we use up everything in the house and wash them just once a week instead of spending an hour daily at the sink. He is trying to convince me to buy a bathtub so we can fill it with used plates. But as you would have seen, he falls in the low influence category and so we are not buying a tub in the near future.

Low support - low influence: Jinku: 'Darling'. He is Indian. I am Indian. He can not lift 5 kg dumb-bells, which automatically means I can not lift 5 kg dumb-bells. Or he will at least say so. His life revolves around women (2D & 3D. Do not mistake the Ds for the 'Ds'. The Ds stand for dimensions. A 2D woman is anyone on print and Internet while a 3D woman the one that walks around in flesh and blood), although he has not spoken to a single female species in the last 8 years I have known him.

High influence - low support: My other me: 'Hello, James Bond.' My other me likes to wear suits and sunglasses, drive super fast convertibles with a cigar in the mouth and 3 lovely ladies in the 3 other seats in the car. So he does not like to wear shorts and run in the gym. And unless he runs, I don't run. That explains his high influence - low support tag.

If you looked at the pictures of the stakeholders, you will observe the high influence people always look up and the low influence people look down. This should help you identify the high influence and low influence people in your offices.

Critical path analysis:

Critical path analysis tells you how you tactically manage running the 1 km. Once you have had your pre-run meal, pick a treadmill that is right behind that pretty girl in short shorts and tight t-shirt chugging along in the cycle. 1 km is a long distance and so you will need all the motivation you can take to complete and pretty ladies are good motivation.

The first 250m: Walking is slow running. So start with a walk but keep swinging your hands up and down so it creates an impression that you are running hard. Try to adjust the elevation to either a flat or negative slope if you can. ( ♫ Its another day in paradise)

The second 250m: Try to run this part. This part is going to be the hardest. Mysteriously, however long you keep your chin up and run and finally look at the time passed, it will not be more than 15 seconds. So start with your usual style of running. You must be able to cross the first 100m this way. To cross the next 100m, imagine yourself to be Arnold Schwarzenegger and try to imitate his style of running. When you come close to completing this 100m you will come to know that even Arnold Schwarzenegger feels tired after running 100m. So muscle does not work at all times. Try the no-muscle run for the next 50m. Run like you have no bones or muscles in your body and let every joint go in every direction. But the time you get used to running this way the next 50m would have also passed.

The third 250m: When you have reached this stage you have crossed half the distance. Although you will want to throw the towel and walk away, you must hang on. ( ♫ I will survive) And I know just the way to hang on. Hold on to the bar in front of the treadmill and let the treadmill drag you for the next 250m. Let your tongue out and pant as hard as you can to keep yourself cool. Dogs hang their tongues out and pant to keep themselves cool. You will by now have noticed that the girl in front of you would have also found you to be cool as she stares at you without blinking her eyelids for the next 30 seconds.

Last 250m: Whenever you run long distance, it is advisable to cool down. Cooling down after you finish your 1km is waste of time and energy. So I suggest you cool down in this 250m. So bring the speed down and start walking again until you hit the 1km mark. Job well done for the day! and its pizza time.

I do this for 22 days and I finish the half marathon. By putting it all down on paper, I have proof that I listened hard in the course and can put theory into practice. My manager will be happy about this when I brief the gathering with the same material this Friday.

My mummy's guide to blogging

2009-07-13T19:23:00.005+01:00

Many people think that to maintain a blog is to just write our inner most carnal desires periodically and post them online. But what they do not know is that the world of bloggers is ridden with secrets and sabotage. In this post I will let you know some of the secrets. In a few days from now, you will automatically get to know about the sabotage as the blogger brethren bury me alive in a maggot filled coffin for letting out what was guarded with great devotion.

Symbiosis. You advertise me, I advertise you. Bloggers are a symbiotic group. If a fellow blogger sticks a link to your blog in his blog, you have to return the favour. I know a lot of you may be angry with me for not having your blog links on my page when you have mine. I would love to have all the names of the blogs I read. It is just that I read one too many blogs and some that are private and closed for public viewship. Since I am honest and impartial, I would like to have all the blog names posted and I don't think the owners of the private blogs are not going to be very happy about it. If you are also one of those who likes to read other people's private stuff, I tell you, it is not very easy to begin with. You should have read every page in the internet until you come across this before you know where each one's secret secrets are hidden.

lol-ing. One of the secrets of increasing your viewship is to go to random blogs and write arbitrary comments. They will visit your blogs to see who you are and thereby increasing your visitor count. You can comment whatever you want, even say the most indecent of obscenities as long as you end it with a smilie or a lol. People are just happy as long as they have comments for their posts.

Rule of 40-60. When the visitor counter reads 10,000, be assured that 4,000 of these visits were from the blogger him/herself. Usually 80% of the visits are from him or her for the first one year; by this time he or she would have given up on writing. In the second year, viewership percentage from other people will increase but eventually settle down at the 40-60 ratio.

Idea hours. Ideas to blogs usually arise when you are in one-to-one meetings with senior managers. As you pretend to actively listen to them, you will painfully see your ideas eroding out of your brain. The interesting ones arise when you are in the toilet on days when you think your last night's spicy biryani is out for one min and not entirely so in the next.

That brings to an end the first set of lessons to blogging. The next set will be released as soon as I manage to nick enough ideas from other unpublicised bloggers. That's another lesson. Steal from others. As long as you can publicise your posts more than the other guy you can always claim it to be your idea. You never know, it may not be his as well!

Beach houses, babes and biscuits

2009-07-12T01:13:00.003+01:00

Prologue: After repeated accusations that I write only for the male fraternity, I have made an attempt to satisfy both the female and male species. So don't write hate mails to me this time.

Why would I not buy a home in Goa? Because buying houses cost money. And I am yet to invent a money making machine. (Mental note: search Wikipedia to learn to make money) But out of some drunken madness, if you wrote a cheque to me for a pot full of money, I still will not buy a home in Goa. Ofcourse, the alcohol is cheap and women come there to shed clothes. But I am not falling for it this time. Instead, I will reason out why You should not buy a home in Goa.

All of Goa and its coast is taken. So your dream of a beach house will only remain a dream. There is no point buying a house 10 miles into the mainland. The beaches are where the babes are. The clever you might fancy buying a telescope. However, the suspicious me and my brotherhood in Goa will brand you as Othakan Sivarasan and send you to Bihar. No questions on why to Bihar.

You might still compromise into buying a house well into the city and picking up babes at the bar. But I have some insider information that even the Government of India is unaware of. Goa has been sold to the European Union and America. So any bar you step into, you will have a hundred eyeballs pinning you down, none of them black or brown, until you chicken out and leave.

'You don't know about me. I am a mutant. I am a hybrid between a human and a certain animal that is known for its thick skin.' Your dad was ofcourse well ahead of his time! But, not everyone is. So you will never be one of them. After a few months you will be desperate and try your luckless luck with the locals. But remember, you are not one of them.

'But that is not too bad. I don't have to be around them as long as I have the telescope.' This is where everyone is mistaken. The hot babes leave Goa when the weather is too hot for them. And Goa is hot for most parts of the year. Assuming you managed to find someone pretty, you still need a joshful Shah Rukh Khan to protect you from the goons from the rival gang.

'Women come and go.. But a home few miles from the beach, fried fish fresh from the sea, cheap liquor, I can settle for that.' That is what you will think, until you have a taste of the real Goa. Your 10 rupee tip is no match to the 10 percent that the foreigner leaves behind. You will only be shy of seeing a board at the restaurant that reads 'dogs and you are not allowed.' So that leaves you with only the alcohol. It is true that Goa is full of cheap liquor. And they call it Feni. Drink it once and tell me if you ever want to drink anything liquid again.

'So should I buy a house for the babes then?'

It is a vicious circle!

Epilogue: I did not write anything about biscuits in this post. I didn't intend to. It is just that biscuits rhymed well with beach houses and babes and I included it in the title.

Weekend work out for the weight watchers

2009-06-23T16:45:00.008+01:00

While the world is struggling to cope up with obesity, there is still a minority that struggles to add even a few ounces. I know two from that minority. One keeps a secret that he wouldn't divulge even in his deathbed. He shops for clothes in the kids section. The other's secret is known to all. Whatever he eats and however big that meal is, he has to have a full meals at the end to fill him up. I can't help people like him. But I can help the first one move from the kids section to the main section. So if you are one of the first kind, follow my fail proof advice for exemplary results.

Make use of the weekend. When you return from work on Fridays, order your Saturday's and Sunday's breakfast, lunch and dinner from a nearby take-away/home delivery restaurant. Do not eat veg. Meat is where the mass is. The more legs the animal has, the better. So dogs, cows and sheep are better than fish and chicken. But spare the spiders. Make sure you eat biryani at least once a day. The key to weight gain is minimising your movements. So once you reach home, drag your bed and fridge next to the front door so you don't have to come to the front door to collect your food. Have five or six large plastic shit bags around you. And for the sake of aesthetics, do not use transparent bags. Try to sit still or lie down as much as possible. If possible try to get one of those wooden machines that Jackie Chan uses in his films to fetch him various things and move him around the house. It should not cost you a lot as it is second hand and Chinese. Drink lots of fluids. But do not drink water. Drink beer. Beer will keep you healthy and provide you those precious calories. The only fruit you are allowed to eat is the mango. I can vouch for mangoes. I gained 7 kilos in two month by supplementing my usual diet with 2 cartons of mangoes (over that period). Sleep. Sleeping minimises your body movements. So sleep as much as you can. You will find it hard in the beginning. But once you cross a threshold, you will be tired from the excessive sleeping and will sleep more than before.

That is the weekend plan. The weekdays plan is at a small price. Contact me for
further details.

Superman

2009-06-23T12:55:00.005+01:00

I waited for a full 2.4 days for Boston to update on our trip to the Stonehenge. He is probably training a speech-to-text software to understand his Anglicised thickly Thamizh-accented Indian English to understand him and write a blog for him. While the world can wait, my writer's itch pleads me to dump him and sketch my version of the trip.

Disclaimer: All ideas to this blog are solely mine and no part is stolen from Boston or Aja.

My arctic trip had skinned me to the bones and I had no money left. So I walked to the office for a week. It was weekend but I had to contend to sitting at home when Boston and Aja rang me up. The plan was already made and I was part of it. We were going to the Stonehenge for the solar solstice.

I knew my finances were bleeding. However, I had an ulterior motive to the trip. The Stonehenge was built in ancient times and it is said that the sun strikes the stones in a certain way on the solar solstice. This unusual event brought druids, tramps, gypsies, pagan worshippers and black magicians to the stones. Now, these people are very interesting people and if they were to congregate at the stones on this day, there must be something in it for all of them. Have you not seen movies where the sun strikes a crystal on a certain date and time, which in turn brings enormous power to the person holding the crystal? And I could be that person holding the crystal. I could become the person I have always wanted to be. I could be Superman!

But did I? That will be my little secret. But just to let you know, my underwear has mysteriously crept over my pants.

North Pole - 1

2009-06-22T22:44:00.008+01:00

'I think you should sit at home and save some money instead of going out so often.' But staying at home, with nothing much to do and nothing on the TV, with just an idle housemate as you are can spur a lot of things. Now, all the perverts stop reading right here. You have got the seed for your imagination and there is nothing exciting and kinky after this.

What really transpired from the idleness cost me a lot of money. It cost me a little over a thousand pounds - my entire life savings. It all began with one simple question: 'How north can we travel?'

N: So raja, What are you doing this weekend?
raja: Backpacking to the arctic circle.

With a backpack, a new pair of shoes and my debit card I entered Heathrow and cleared all the Norwegian Kroners that all the American Express Forex depots had in stock that day. I was going to be the second Indian (Or at least that is what I thought) to set foot on Longyearbyen, the northern most human settlement in the world.

Confession: I have an ASS* now which will last for the next 7 days. Like common cold, this condition has no cure and will naturally fade away. Because of the condition, I named the post 'North Pole' even though I was a good thousand miles south of the north pole.

* Attention Seeking Syndrome

Second language

2009-06-19T15:55:00.002+01:00

There are several advantages to your parents moving cities frequently when you are at school. You don’t have to be in that class where that bullying teacher made your little life miserable. Whether you completed your homework or not, whether you made a 100 or a zero, she always screamed at the entire class – at each one of you.

There is an added advantage if you moved states. If you are stubborn enough to tell the teacher that the second language you studied in your entire 3 years of schooling and the new second language that the new school taught were different; and that your little brain could not accommodate the new second language; and that you wished to maintain your cultural integrity; and if that school did not have a teacher who can teach the second language of your choice, you don’t have to study a second language. It happened to me!

And so for the next two months, for one full hour every working day, I played football by myself, roamed around the corridors, dug out earthworms and threw stones at the mango tree in the adjacent compound in a quest that one day I will be able to make strike one little mango. It however did not last long. If the mango tree had a glass window near it, it is not your mistake that the stone aimed at the mangoes cracked the window. As a 7 year old you think you can get away with it if you kept quiet about it. But not if the occupant of the house complains to the principal and not if you are the only one in the entire school premises to have the licence to roam the campus.

And so for the next year and three-quarters I spent my one free hour at the biology lab that houses preserved specimens such as meek looking snakes, a human kidney, gory lizards and a plastic skeleton.

While it was not entirely comfortable to have a skeleton to provide you company for an hour and your 7 year old male ego prevented you from confessing that you were pissing your pants at the look of it, you can always bank on your parents to move schools for you soon.

And they did. This time I was back to the state where the only second language I studied was the first language of the state and the second language of the school. But there was a problem again. I did not study a second language for the last two years to cope up with the rigours of a 4th standard class. You can always tell the teacher that your little brain with insufficient training will not accommodate the language after a two years break or that you wished to establish national integrity by not being biased at learning just that one second language. But it doesn’t work that way if the teacher happens to yet another bullying teacher who made your little life miserable.

Note: I learnt to read and write Thamizh reading Siruvar Malar from my neighbourhood library. After more than a decade I enrolled myself today into the local library and it brought back memories of my first library. I wanted to write about it and instead my confused, in two minds,uncertain, indecisive levelhead scribbled yet another nonsensical post.

The Day of Reckoning

2009-06-17T15:24:00.004+01:00

I knew it was coming. But did not know it was to come this soon.

Saturday Night & the Kingfisher Girls

2009-06-09T15:02:00.004+01:00

You don't say no when someone pays half your travel cost to travel 5000 miles for her wedding. It was my first Kingfisher flight. The first thing you will notice as you enter the aircraft is that unlike BA and Jet, there are no air-hosters. It was an all female servicing crew. The next thing you will notice is that unlike IA, they are all pretty. There was one similarity though - in all of these flights, all the air hostess have an inch thick foundation cream on their faces.

I was later told that the women were hand picked by Mallya. If I were in Mallya's position, I would have picked the same girls. But instead of having them work in the London-Heathrow aircraft, I would have them work in my private jet. It is just like what Mukund said he would do if he were put in a closed room with 'that' pretty actress; naked to the skin.

My luck got better when Sandhya sat next to me. Otherwise, how else would I have known that kids these days are so electronics savvy. I was very amazed at her seamless navigation on the touchscreen interface. The hand controller to the touchscreen distracted me away from Sandhya's dexterity and the pretty ladies shuffling around. This hand controller looked like a PS3 controller and there were games on the TV to top it. But my joy was short lived as I managed to load test the software yet again and crash the system.

Sir, would you like a beer?
I just had two and I wanted to say no. But when a pretty lady asks you repeatedly, the 'no' in the brain comes out as 'sure' from the mouth. Two more beers later I was just short of snoring when two mischievous minions who sat behind me pulled into full action. Their mum should have become immune to their screams over the years as she slept peacefully midst all the pandemonium. They didn't stop there. They repeatedly switched on and off other passengers' overhead reading lamps until they were out of their seats. I was out of my seat too. Beauty does not come with brains, doesn't it? Otherwise why would the air hostess give me so many beers, when, ideally she should have poured a couple of shots of JD for the kids and got them to sleep.

If the kids were one problem, the hand controller was another. The controller snug under the left armrest. So every time you moved a bit in your sleep, you either accidentally pressed the overhead reading lamp or the service button that summons the air hostess. While I liked to press just one of them repeatedly, I could not control the outcome of my twisting and turning as I unsuccessfully tried to sleep for the rest of the flight.

I disembarked from the plane, copied answers to a swine flu questionnaire from my neighbour and waited impatiently for the next 8 hours before I boarded another plane. It was the most turbulent flight ever in my life. But that story on another day...

Life lesson 1308: Everything happens for the good. If the boys had not woken me up at 2 AM in the morning, (when it was 6 30 AM at Madurai) I would have been jet lagged for the next 3 days and missed the wedding.

Cruel Intentions

2009-06-09T13:49:00.004+01:00

It was a disappointment when Kumar stopped blogging. That was understandable. The weight of his new family must have broken his back. But why did the don stop writing? I had my own selfish interests for him to continue to write as he probably was the only one who ever mentions me in a blog!!

'So Don, why have you stopped writing?'
'You probably are the only one who ever reads my blog.'

While I told him that he didn't need a reader to write a blog, I knew it was upto him to write or not.

So why do I write? It is my vent. I am not sure what it is a vent to, but it certainly is very pleasurable to me when I write something. If I had to talk all the rubbish I write, I would have already been killed and mummified as a warning to all the living men and women like me. I stopped advertising my blog sometime ago after someone I knew humiliatingly told me not to send her links to my posts. But that does not stop me from writing, does it? Instead it inspires me to write good (what I think is good) blogs. I wish that one day she reads a good (what she thinks is good) post from my page, chuckles at it and then reads this to realise that it is her that I have mentioned in this post. But I know, it is a cruel world where my cruel intentions will not be realised.

Cooking lessons for first time cookers

2009-05-29T11:49:00.005+01:00

If you live in India, give up on your cooking ambitions and head to the nearest restaurant. The meal there is going to be quicker, cheaper and tastier than the mouth watering concoction you think you will be able to cook.

If you lived elsewhere, you couldn't have gone anywhere better to learn about cooking. Believe me. When cricket is a religion, Sachin is God. Just so, when cooking is a religion... you know the rest, don't you?

Ok, let us cut down on some egotism and concentrate on the cutting and chopping. Peak performances can be achieved only when there is a pressure to perform. So if you are going to cook for yourself, there is not going to be any pressure. Therefore invite your boss and his boss for dinner and tell them to skip lunch that day. But never tell them what you intend to cook. What you intend to cook is not always what ends up on the table and it is not on your hands.

The first and foremost lesson for any kind of cooking is to have a Plan B: Always have a plan B. Buy a maggi before you set foot into the kitchen. Following that, unplug the smoke alarm. Smoke alarms are useless devices that go off even when you light a match a mile from them. When you cook there is bound to be some smoke. Don't be bothered about it until the flame under the frying pan leaps onto the top and torches the roof of your kitchen black. When that happens, you should call a fire brigade. So keep your phone ready with the fire brigade number keyed in. The corner stone of any cuisine is onions and tomatoes. Normally, cook books will instruct you to chop them. There is a big possibility that you will chop one of your fingers. Now that is not bad. But not everyone is non-vegetarian. So keeping the herbivore species in mind, use a mixie and crush them all. This is all vegetarian and it saves some time. Since this will be your first time cooking, your imagination would have run wild and you would have bought every conceivable ingredient from the shop. But what you would not have done is cut open the packs before you started the process. But never mind; try and tear open the sachets while the cauldron of broth is spewing smoke and reducing visibility. You are bound to spill half the contents when the sachet splits into two. But never mind that too; because in exactly 3 seconds, the flames from the bottom of the pan is going to move to the top. So your next action to stop the flames will be to pour some liquid onto the pan. Avoid pouring oil unless you wish to understand what the expression 'adding fuel to fire' really meant. Next is the salt lesson. Do not forget to add salt. Just after you have added salt, you will always feel that you should add one more spoonful and after much deliberation you eventually will. But the last spoonful of salt will turn your meal salty and there is no way of getting over the last spoon temptation. When you have arrived at this stage, your meal is ready.

After-note: Never boil ladies-fingers unless you are making a jelly for dessert

Airport at MG Road

2009-05-28T13:57:00.005+01:00

That I have spent a fortune to arrive in time for Arun's wedding, and that I have a history of missed buses and trains (I was not the one to blame for any of them), I decided to check on the flight dates and timings. I got the date correct but the timing wasn't so right. The stupid daylight savings had confused the airlines. Or atleast, I would like to blame it on the stupid daylight savings.

Next, I had to figure out my inflight and transit entertainment. But I am not going to worry too much about the inflight entertainment. The kingfisher girls sure know I am flying this Saturday night. But the problem is when I arrive at Bangalore the next morning and when I have to wait 7 hours for my connecting flight to Madurai. Sure, I can use that time to finish a few levels of NFS or The Satanic Verses, but my bum is not very happy to sit on steel chairs for the full 7 hours. So I arranged for Sridhar to pick me up.

I know Sridhar through Arun. For years Arun and D used him as the sidekick who is ready to accompany them on dayouts, dinners and movies. While he was genuinely overwhelmed at their including him in all their activities, he never suspected their evil plans. Otherwise why would Arun's bike have only two seats that will fit only Arun and D while Sridhar rode the bus? Or why would he be part of D's birthday party when there was no party on his birthday? But the unsuspecting Sridhar will know nothing of it. And again, this weekend, they have guiled him into coming to Madurai. So he will not be available to pick me up.

My next option was Collins. But I can not expect Collins to come to the Airport after his hangover from the previous night. So I rang him up to find my way to his house. But there was bad news. The Bangalore airport is an hour and half away from anything that is Bangalore and Collins' house was a 2 hour journey from the airport. Discounting all the travel, check-in and check-out there is probably going to be just an hour for me to spend at his house. Cushioned chairs at the cost of Rs 150 each way and one free beer (that I assume Collins will pay for) are no way better than the free steel chairs. 'Could you send a couple of your girlfriends to the airport.' He almost hung up the phone. People are becoming too selfish to share.

I then trashed out a million exciting ideas for another million unexciting reasons. I finally decided to settle in at the airport. So I looked into the airport website to check out the facilities offered by the airport. To my ill luck their restaurants, food & beverage section was blank. I suppose they did not have anything to offer there.

As the mind wandered around in search of new ideas to keep itself busy, two thoughts struck me. 1. Why are there not people thronging to pick me up? Don't they know that all people flying from overseas bring with them cheap liquor which they generously distribute? 2. Why is the Bangalore airport so far off from the city? Why can't it be shifted to the centre of the city? For sure, space is a constraint and planes need long runways to land and take off. But why can't we move to VTOL aircraft? Now there is an idea. And that is an interesting way to kill my time. So I will build a case to show the government why we should and how we could move the airport to MG Road. And in that 7 hours, I probably will also convince the airport authorities with my idea so that the next time I fly in, I don't have to travel 2 hours for a pint of free beer.

Sunburns & Sticky Armpits

2009-05-28T10:58:00.003+01:00

Living close to the equator has its own advantages. Yes, we don't experience spring, or winter; or autumn; but who likes change. The body gets used to the eternal third degree sunburns and sticky armpits. So when I was flown into the middle of semi-arctic winter from the one-weather land, it was only a teeth clattering experience.

In the first few months, the sun never turned up for work. When I woke up, it was dark. When I put on layers and layers of wool and just let my face uncovered for the security guard at the office to identify me to let me through, there was no sun. When I was tired of my (n)ever exciting work and left office, there was no sun either. I was not the only one to complain. One senior manager from a not so sunny land as ours confessed that she used sunbeds regularly to keep herself ticking. But why did she tell me that? Anyway...The sun never turned up and my melanin content dropped by the day at an alarming rate. I was afraid the pretty girls were never going to recognise me when I go back.

But just when I was turning into an Albino, it is summer again; which meant the sun was back from its holiday. But here again, there was a problem. It knocked me out of bed even before the hen was out of its bed. That was not it. I always thought that we ate supper after sunset because we did not want to share it with the sun. When I tried to do that here, I was hungry and sleepy for the first few days unsuccessfully waiting for the sun to go. That is because the sun would not switch off before 10 pm. Overtime for the lost time in winter I suppose. Joseph's family will be the only family that will find it alright with the sun setting at 10, for they probably are the only ones who eat their dinner after 11. It is time to push him to make use of his unused HSMP.

The Quick Curry Maker

2009-05-27T16:32:00.011+01:00

Cooking is not what you really want to do when you are back from office after a tiring day. Especially when you sat at your desk all day resisting muscle movements and wondering why the office did not care to plant a water pipe right next your mouth or provide you with a pee pipe fitted chair. The inactiveness is infectious and transcends into your home. And unlike Chennai, eating out everyday is not an option here. The office pays me only just enough to buy groceries, frozen pizzas, booze, video games and a return flight ticket to one European country. So I have the option to either cook or heat a frozen pizza. While settling for the latter is the easier convenient option, it comes with a prize. I am forced to upgrade my wardrobe every fortnight or shift to elastic pants, which both cost me. So I have to use all my IQ to figure out new innovative cooking methods and dishes that will not take me more than fifteen minutes to cook. While new innovations kept popping by the minute, the mother of them all is my patent pending curry maker. For centuries my foremothers (my forefathers only knew to eat) spent half their lifetimes chopping onions and tomatoes. While I applaud them for their contributions to the current state of affairs at my parents' dining room, I can not say the same thing about the last two television infected generations. The melodrama from the mega-serials is augmented by the teary eyed cousins, aunts and grannys chopping onions. And onions and tomatoes are the primary ingredients of anything that I cook. So to help both parties, I present my invention. Or atleast part of it. (I know you will steal my idea if I told you everything) The mixer. Don't chop the onions or tomatoes. Just use your age old mixers and crush them all. The entire cook time takes less than half an hour. And best of all, it works!

That I have stumbled across the greatest invention after the wheel, I must quickly patent it so I can sell its rights. That will bring me extra money which I can then use to eat out everyday.

The leap of 26

2009-05-12T16:09:00.006+01:00

Turning 26 is scarier than I had anticipated. A lot of my friends marked their 25th birthdays as new chapters of their lives. It did not seem so to me. Nothing changed at 25. But now, at the brink of 26, everything suddenly seems to be transforming into new and unimagined things. Cricketers are now younger than I am. Friends who played tennis ball football in sweltering heat and fought over a piece of candy bar are sending wedding invitations. The quiet and loud little girls I have known are infesting social websites with pictures of their little ones. The ambitious ones who were once worker-bees now have new-bees working for them. The perennial pencil borrowers have become owners of new homes. Atul has finished his PhD. And I will no longer be eligible for young person discounts on train journeys as I turn 26.

The world around me is changing and I have to borrow a mirror to find out if I am changing with it.

It matters who you are

2009-04-29T14:18:00.003+01:00

Front & Back

2009-04-29T14:14:00.000+01:00

S: Why the hell do they have white boards in the front and yellow boards at the back of cars here in the UK?
N: Because that is how we identify which side the front is and which side the back is?

Mine & Yours

2009-04-16T20:23:00.001+01:00

My experiments with music

2009-04-16T19:40:00.003+01:00

My sister attended dance classes when she was a little girl. My mum, being an equal opportunity mother, wanted me to pursue a vocation. The result was a gorgeous Givson box guitar and guitar classes with one of the boarding school's brothers - saintly men with a ghastly sense of discipline. However, the class timings clashed with my playtime and I made every excuse to make him sit by himself at the class. He also tried to teach me tunes from film songs; which my unmusical self thought was not the way to learn music. So spiders used my guitar as their nesting ground.

In the meantime, our 'band' was placed second at the inter-school light music competition. Now, I will tell you how to win a second place at an inter-school light music competition. First, the competition has to be held in your own school. Second, your school must be fighting for an overall points position and your event should make or break your school's chances of clenching the trophy. Third, you must have one good musician and singer in your band. Fourth and the most important, you must have the innate ability to sync your lips to what your lead musician sang. The second place is yours.

I took my box guitar every time I went to college after the holidays. It did not create the kind of impression I was pushing for with the girls. Every year, The Don strung the same few Tamizh tunes he learnt when he was a kid and Kattu Pulla strummed the only two lines he knew from Metallica. And then the guitar disappeared.

It was years before my musical quest resurfaced again recently. One of my colleagues suggested I browse ebay to find bicycle deals. One search led to another and before long I had purchased an 3X2 feet India flag, The Satanic Verses and an Electronic keyboard. I also decided that I must take the bus and abandon my bicycle persuits.

Currently, like a true patriot in a foreign land, I have hung the flag in my room. The novel; I will not do injustice to the four other novels I had bought before this one. So it will have to wait.

How can you learn to play the keyboard without an instructor? And my last instructor was not very good. My housemate, who is a teacher, advised me that 'those who can do, do. And those who can't, teach.' I believed in him and in my new distrust towards teachers, bought an online course module to teach myself.

This is an expensive keyboard. And I have to make the most of it. Or atleast I have to let other people know that I own an expensive keyboard. So I buzzed one of my friends on Skype video and showed him my new sleek gadget.

Though he knew my musical history, he insisted I play him a tune or two. People. You can not play a music instrument without being trained. It is worse than some people ask 'So; you learnt French as your second language in classes 11 and 12! Why don't you say something in French?' 'Le F@#$ O^&'

But.

Lessons for life No: 0470: Never let other people know what you can not do.
Lessons for life No: 553: Know where the Demo button is on the keyboard.

And so I secretly pressed the demo button and pretended to play while he immersed himself in the joys of music.

The last ride

2009-04-07T07:55:00.004+01:00

It will be unfair to let go of Snowwhite into oblivion without acknowledging what she was to me. I remember the day she arrived in the train - glittering black, dressed in jute and cardboard. I then only theoretically knew to ride a motorcycle and all the practice was to come in the busy roads of Chennai. I did very well, crashing her only once into a Premier Padmini at a signal in Mount road. I forgot how to work the break!

From then until last November, Snowwhite was through my thick and thin. On bright, sunny and light Saturdays, we ambled around the city in pure joy. The early morning rides were a delight as we pierced through the cool winds and raced monstrous machines. When I have had my lean moments, we pushed ourselves to the limits, sending us into states of ecstasy and indescribable trance. The first 100 and the many 100s will always be memorable.

I knew it would only be fitting if we did one last long ride before I left. So we drove from Chennai to Bangalore.

It took a while to get out of Chennai. However, it was all fun once we were on the highway. The 50s in the outskirts turned to 80s. We broke journey for breakfast and then the speed perched up a notch higher, constantly kicking the 100 marker.

You know the feeling when facing a new and challenging situation? - The not my comfort zone feeling? And then you grill through and have enough of it until that hyper state becomes a normal comfort state. The nervous jitters at the beginning when the speedometer struck 100 was soon gone. The 'will Snowwhite take a puncture' or 'will I skid her off the road' questions were soon forgotten. And soon, we were cruising a little over 110. It was a breeze. But we never got further than that. That was her physical limit.

While we reached Bangalore in a little less than four and half hours, Arun's stupendous directional skills meant that it took over seven hours in total to get to his cousin's place.

It was a very satisfying ride. I rode to my heart's content and now, it was okay to let go of Snowwhite. She had saved her best for the last ride. It was evident when I calculated how much petrol she consumed during the trip. She could only do a 35 kms per litre while she usually does 50.

It is going to be very challenging for her especially with Arun and D together. Their combined m(m=we)ight broke his Yamaha's axle. But she will be alright.

Shoe-washer

2009-03-23T19:34:00.004Z

As lazy as I always am after work, I chucked my shoes into the washing machine only to realise that I could possibly be the first person in the history of mankind to use a washing machine to clean shoes! To my delight, the shoes came out spick and span.

And so here is my first contribution to society - an easy shoe-washer for the lazy and the likes.

ps: Do not be concerned about the noise as the washer tumbles your shoes around. Your shoes are never going to break or deform the stainless steel drum.

Superheros

2009-03-13T11:40:00.006Z

You can always tell what a pickle you are in when you keep flipping through the menu over and over again, and look up often to see if any other in the table has decided like you to quietly slip out of the restaurant.

Peela: evlovo pannitom, idha pannamaatoma?

Damn Peela.

I scanned through the prices and pencilled in on the cheapest main course available.

Waiter: Sir, are you ready to order?

Raja: Oh, yes. Three of these please (pointing to my selection. No prizes for guessing that all of us wanted to eat the same unpronouncable dish!)

Waiter: Any starters?

Raja: No, we are good. We are in a hurry. We would like a quick lunch.

Waiter: Drinks? Juice? Wine?

I looked at Peela with a questioning look and asked hesitantly, 'Juice?'

Peela: 'Or mineral water?' He turned over to Officer with the same embarrassed hesitant questioning look and asked again. 'Mineral water?'

Officer: Tap water.

The waiter did not ask another question!

While many of us struggle to say the evident, there are those few who can take that extra leap for the rest of us. They are our superheros!

English Delicacy

2009-03-03T20:47:00.003Z

Journey to the Top of the Earth

2009-02-02T22:45:00.001Z

I have had a really long lull between my last crazy fantasy dream and this one. But I am only happy that they have not died down. This time, I travelled to the highest point on earth. It was not Mount Everest though. My highest piece of land mass was not an icy mountain that is conquered by persevering mountaineers. It was a place that can be reached travelling in a bus. Not the Airbus, but the usual rutty RMTC buses that ply between Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Why did I go? Who were with me? Where did I begin my journey? I do not know. What I do know is what it was like to go to the top of the Earth. It was exhilarating and unforgettable. I realise why people endeavour to risk their lives for a few moments on the summit.

It was an early morning when the bus creaked out of the town into the foothills that will lead to the mountains that held the peak. The winding roads and hair-pin bends were of no surprise to me as it was to many other travellers. I was told that it was a thirteen hour journey. Was it tough? Not really. I would have made thirteen hundred thirteen hour journeys to ponder if it was long or not. I knew it was long. And I knew it was bearable. The hot gusts of wind that blew as we rolled out of the town slowly mellowed into a cool breeze before it turned cold.

It was not the icy Himalayas. It was the typical tropical forest that I often encountered. Stone railings at bends to prevent vehicles from toppling over, clans of monkeys waiting for the lone motorcyclist, dark green leaves with just a single speck of water on their tips from last night’s rain, the sweet smell of soil, the big and small pot-holes and the muddy waters in them, the thatched roofed huts that were interspersed amidst the greenery like the tooty-fruities on a pastry, a bunch of villagers indulged in their morning smoke, the bare-backed boy running after his brother who rolled down a tyre with a stick – they were all familiar sights, but fresh and refreshing.

We could all feel the climb getting steeper and steeper as our backs stuck to the seats; and the hands clutched the bars in front. The first bag of home-made breakfast rolled over from the front of the bus to the back. The owner of the bag could only trip and fall when he tried to grab it. The heart skipped many a beats and it was one of those very rare moments when you are not ashamed to telling anyone that you are scared. I pleaded with gravity to go easy on us. I pleaded for everyone; because my life depended on everyone’s. The belief in miracles waned as the bus inched closer to ninety degrees. I was sure we were all going to get sucked back to the base camp like a paper trifle into the vacuum cleaner.

I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. Well, I have not always heard about it, but just once; in American Beauty. Anyway, I waited for this my-life-movie to start. To my great disappointment, I could only hear the hum of the engine as it tried to thug inch by inch. I knew I had a dull life devoid of memorable instances, but come on, not even a one minute promo?

That is because, I was not dying yet. The upright drive ended and we were on flat grounds. Zero degrees. Sorry, did I say zero degrees? No, I was wrong. It was one-eighty degrees – we were travelling upside down going around in an inward spiral. Once, twice, thrice, the circular ride did not end. I was definitely going down head first. Will the hand of God not hold the bus until it reached someplace safe? No, no, no. I was not to believe in the concept of God. Come on, think of someone else to help, you idiot. The head ran and reran the database of all my human and machine friends I knew to come to an inconclusive standstill. Everything seemed to be at a standstill but for the knowledge that I was travelling upside down. And then…

And then, when the bus was close to the centre of the circle, it rose up. It rose up and began moving up in another ninety degree road. Only this time, it was not as scary as the first time.

Did I reach the summit? I do not know. But the journey was as good as reaching the summit. Will I do it again? No. Why? I will allude to a friend of mine who recently completed a marathon. ‘It is quite a fanciful thing to boast to people that you finished a marathon. But, to do it again, no, your legs really hurt.’ I died a million times on that journey. I have experienced it once and that will be it. I am happy stretched on my couch, with a cheese burger, criticising Roger’s game against Fernando. Should you do it? Definitely. A. Because it is one hell of an experience. B. If you die, it is good riddance. It is one less leeching this place.

Marital Status

2008-09-26T11:11:00.002+01:00

F3: Sir, are you married?
R: No.
F3: What about your parents?
R: Yes, they are.

On the firing line

2008-09-04T16:22:00.004+01:00

F2: Sir, I am calling from HSBC investments, sir?
R: How may I help you?
F2: Investments, Sir?
R: I just got fired from my job today. So it is not a really good time to speak.
F2: Oh! okay.

F2* - Another female tele-caller

Proximity Problem

2008-08-27T09:04:00.004+01:00

Danger: who is the moron who came up with the idea of placing the stupid 0 (zero) right over the o (the alphabet o) on a keyboard?

Bargain

2008-08-26T08:14:00.002+01:00

Raja: Kiran, I can sign as a witness.
Nitin: I will sign too. But I will need a signature inreturn for a signature

What was his name?

2008-07-30T10:12:00.003+01:00

mum
yeah
mo'ommm
yeah I am liS-Ning
Who is your best friend?
You are my best friend...
No, not like that. Like nitin is my best friend. Who was yours?
I had many
Not best friendS. Best FRIEND.
Hmm.. there was this guy at college... very funny guy...What was his name?

A happy dream

2008-07-29T13:03:00.005+01:00

One more dream. One more battlefield. This time it is a fight between the north and the south. What is the north and what is the south? The dream did not tell me. But it was a bloody battle. I fought for the south. We were losing. But we kept on fighting, for we knew that giving up is death. 'They' kept no prisoners. I should have been fighting for many days. I was tired. But I was always alert and conscious of the impending danger. It rained hard all the time. But the rain did not bother anyone. Everyone slept in the slush. It was not a time to make comfortable beds. We ate what we found. Some we burnt before we ate and some we ate as it was. I was covered with dirt. I have been killing soldier after soldier just to keep myself alive. One after the other everyone from my troop is dead. But I have no time to mourn. I kill people. I don't derive any pleasure from killing them; I feel no sorrow as well. I live.

I feel a thud at the top of my neck. It a bullet. And then another one just below the first. And another one, making it look like three dots in a straight line. My legs go weak and I fall flat on my back. The enemy has no time to find out who I am. But I have all the time. I see him moving for his next kill. It is atul. How can he? The grey sky turns black. I feel another bout of bullets pumped into my chest. It is again one after the other. Someone is killing a dead man. It is a professor from college I did not like. But I liked the course he taught. How can he do this to me?

I wake up in civilisation to realise that the battle has ended. Our land is not occupied. Nor did we occupy theirs. But I need to go to the enemy's land to find something. What is it? I do not know. But I need to travel. I travel by many means. I am used to the rigours of hard life. So the travel does not make me sick. But my destiny does. I reach 'there' to find the Japanese chieftain declare: We have lost many men in a battle that did not yield us anything. So we pick soldiers names from the enemy's camp at random and kill them. The names will be printed alphabetically. I request the chieftain to allow me to retire to my land. But he will not until he has seen that my name is not 0n the list. Someone comes in to declare my name is not on the list. As I hurry back, the someone comes beside me and says 'Look, the list I showed has names printed till PO and your name starts with a PR. So you never know if your name is on the list or not. So you better run.' I run, I cross lands and rivers until I finally am in a bus. It is raining heavily. I realise that I will have to live the rest of my life with the fear of someone coming to kill me. But I live. Now. End Of Dream

ps: Atul's comment on the dream: wow awesome.. i got to shoot u... chah i never hav happy dreams like those

MSc (Honours) Physics

2008-07-16T07:45:00.005+01:00

I am also a physics major. But that is the end of the story. The year I did my physics was a disaster. But the disaster made men out of us boys. It taught us the art of putting up a bright face in moments of despair. We learnt to make jokes of those desperate moments. We learnt resilience and shamelessness instead of celestial body movements or atomic behavior.

Ok, that was a little too much. We got #$%^ed everywhere, all the time, but we still had fun. I swear.

Our names in red with a bold D (mid & end semester grades) beside them in department notice boards only evoked a sense of pride. We did what no other batch of students had done before.

In the quantum mechanics classes (which we attended only to collect our test papers), we were the only group of guys who giggled when the professor said bra; even at the end of the semester. Apparently there is a bra and a ket which makes a bracket.

We photocopied studious guys' class notes for open book exams. But the agony of not being able to match answers in the work books to the questions asked just because the moron who gave us the notes didn't write down the questions in class is inexplicable.

There was another course we did and I do not want to name it. Because, if you asked me anything other than its name, I wouldn't know. The course was for 100 marks and the final exam (alternate name: compre) contributed 40 marks to it. We did not know if we would fall into an E or a D. We wanted that D desperately. So we went to up the professor in a hope for a pullup (you get pulled to a higher grade if the professor recognised your face).

One of us: Sir, pullup

Prof: Definitely. How much did you make?

Another one of us: Sir, 25

Prof: 25 in compre. That is fantastic.

The other one of us: No sir. In total.

The look on the instructor's face said it all.

Prof: 25 in total deserves a D.

I think he intended to figuratively spit on our faces for ours marks. But we did it again! We got our Ds!

On the first day of campus interviews, I was shortlisted by the two companies selecting candidates that day. #$% was one of them. I cleared three gruelling rounds of interviews before I met the big man, the final hurdle. I believe he was a book worm once. He started of with questions from my chemical engineering. I stood unnerved for twenty minutes. He looked lost and the battle seemed to be won, until he said: What did you read in electro magnetic theory?

me: We read about the effects of electricity on magnetic properties.

My raised left eyebrow gave it all. I was shown the door. I made it at the other company!

Even today a lot of people ask me: You are a chemical engineer. But why physics? You must really like physics!

me: You bet I do!

* we, us - Balan, Kampa & myself

Rewind

2008-07-10T09:16:00.001+01:00

How did you feel the first time you learnt how to draw a cube?

The curse of the single male - Travel woes

2008-06-19T09:09:00.003+01:00

Every since I was a kid, I have been marginalised because I am a male. More particularly because I am a single male. I have been marginalised everywhere. Be it the limitations in choosing a fashionable dress or ordering an electric blue coloured mock tail in a pub or renting a decent place to live. It is abandoned territory everywhere for the single male.

While my curse-of-the-single-male experiences could bulge up to a book, I am limited to write about my travel woes today due to another curse of having to work 8 hours a day to earn my daily biryani.

It all started way back when I was a kid. Even if I bought a full ticket for a bus ride, I always had to share my seat with an oversized smelly adult. Girls did not have to go through the agony as their mothers looked at it as a blot in their pristine female sanctity. I had to wait for years before I could grow up and fill the entire seat by myself.

But when I grew up, I had to content with another problem. I was travelling long distances and had to use semi-sleeper buses. A single male is always and automatically allotted a seat at the back. It does not matter even if I reserve the ticket a month in advance. When will I ever sit in seats numbered 2 or 3 and stretch my legs for an entire night?

An optimistic mind always found a solution. I found a way to stretch my legs. I started to use sleeper trains for these overnight journeys. But the curse never left. There invariably was an elderly woman or a young mother who can not climb up to the upper berth, and they invariably spotted me. I was requested to swap berths. And so the claustrophobic little hole between an iron mesh and a couple of rattling fans became the eternal berth of every acrophobic single male.

The fear of looking down the window and realising that I am kilometres above the ground and a weak bladder that is to be deflated every second hour forces me to choose an aisle seat when I travel in long haul airplanes. But here again, the plot is well set against me. Women with children and elderly people board the plane before any (un)able young man does. And so when I look to take my seat, the seat is already taken. 'Please would you sit by the window. I have a kid and he needs to go to the toilet quite often. He has a weak bladder. You know.'

'Mine is just as weak as your son's, only a little bigger'. I wish I had said that to her. But then the curse remained and I sat in a corner looking down the window.

How I swallowed a thousand eggs

2008-05-30T04:29:00.007+01:00

Calcutta has not changed. No, it has. It is Kolkatta. But that's pretty much it. Or well, that's pretty much for most part of the city. But there are ofcourse these new additions, now in every Indian city, - swanking new cars, plush apartments, wide roads and glittering malls - that have become the symbols of new age urban India.

But otherwise, it has remained the Calcutta I have seen - The yellow Ambassador cabs with a honking problem, an omnipresent stink, the crowd, the traffic and the carefree trams amidst it, the rossogollas and the Howrah bridge.

What was different this time was an unexpected shower of hospitality from one of my colleagues. I was invited to his parents' place. For the next 3 hours I spent my time watching Tom & Jerry and eating the innumerous sweets, delicacies, fruits and the many more things that were sprawled across the table. That was probably the first time I ate a Lichi fruit. Tastes just like the Lichi drink from Real. Or is that supposed to be otherwise!

What followed next was a sumptuous meal with rice, dhal, and fish curry. It was kind of queer to find fish and dry fish used in the same curry. And I being a gourmet had to ask.

' No, no, no. That is not dry fish. Those are fish eggs!'

That is when the head goes spinning for a minutest moment. Eggs of fish? How many did I eat? Won't they hatch inside my stomach and make a pond out of it? There must have been hundreds of them? It is psychological thing when you eat something new and something that you have not imagined to eat. That is exactly how I felt when I accidently boiled ants along with maggi. The noodles tasted just like usual until I saw the first dead body. I couldn't push another spoon of it.

'So how do you like it.'

'Oh, it's fantastic!'

(Is it? Dry fish is fantastic and this tastes like dry fish. So this has to be fantastic. But this is an agglomeration of a thousand fish eggs!)

'So you should eat more of it. May be you should try the fried ones. They taste even better.'

When Antony Bourdain can eat sheep testicles, can't I eat fish eggs?

Costly affair

2008-05-27T08:51:00.004+01:00

Doc: Which part of the country is clothes cheap?
Ananth: I don't know. May be Calcutta, Bombay. No Surat.
Doc: I then have to plan an official trip there to purchase uniforms for my kids. Clothes have become very expensive here.

Just in time

2008-05-27T06:03:00.003+01:00

I reached the Kharagpur railway station at 5:30 in the morning - 25 minutes before the train's scheduled arrival. The information board did not specify my train's platform number. I therefore went up to the enquiry cell and asked for the platform number.

'Riybpt'
'What?'
'See riybpt' (See right)
'Yeah, but the board does not work.'
'Waibt. It will work.'

I went again to him; this time at 5:50
' Waibt, it will come.'
' Come on, the train arrives in 5 minutes. And the board does not work. There is no information from the PA systems as well. And look at those monstrous steps I might have to climb.'
'Waibt. I will conbpfirm.'
He picked up the phone and spoke to someone in Bangla.
'The train will come in platpform two or pfour.' 'Or pfive.'
'It is another minute or two for the train to arrive and you tell me it could be in 2 or 4, or 5?

The PA system intervened. The train will be arriving in platform 2. I lunged towards the stairs.

Platform 1 >>
Platform 2, 2a, 4 >>

What?? How can one set of stairs lead to 3 platforms? What the heck? Let's go.

And there it was. I was standing on the world's longest railway platform. Three platforms in one platform. Each separated from the other by an iron partition.

The platform did not indicate where the AC compartment would stop. So I stood somewhere in the mid-section of the platform. And as it always should be, I had to walk, jog and run a bit to get to the coach before the train started again.

The TTR checked the tickets.
'The other two who were to travel with me are not traveling.'
No response.
Then he said, 'Get rebphund' and walked away with the ticket.

'Hey. Wait. why are you walking away with my ticket.'

By then he was gone. I had to endure being bumped, cornered and crushed by many suitcases and fat ladies before I found the TTR again. (Praise the guy who brought in the rule that TTRs wear coats. How else would I have identified him.)

'Sir, you took my ticket away. And I can't get down without a ticket.'
'I am giving you rebphund. Two people did not come know.'

There is a saviour everywhere. Or did I mumble too loud to let the TTR know that I have little money and was looking for an ATM.

'That is very nice of you.' Money always makes me smile.

He filled in a form as I waited to sign at the bottom and collect 'my' money.

'Here, gibve the pform in railway istation and get rebphund.'

I didn't ask for paper money? I want real money.

Speed limit

2008-05-27T04:20:00.004+01:00

Have you ever wondered why several motorists drive at hair raising speeds in the road abutting the Elliot's beach? I have; several times; until I solved the riddle this morning.

Money matters

2008-05-20T13:01:00.004+01:00

F: Sir I am calling from Tata AIG Life Insurance.
R: If you are trying to sell me an insurance, the chances are very less that I will buy one.
F: Why Sir?
R: Because I think I am too young to be insured.
F: Are you under 18?
R: No.
F: Then you need to be insured.
R: The truth is I don't have enough money for myself.
F: Oh!

F* - Female caller with a sexy voice
R* - Raja

Get accustomed

2008-05-20T05:22:00.002+01:00

Not everything that everyone writes in custom messages on messengers is for me.

From a deflated wallet on an inflated economy

2008-05-19T09:40:00.007+01:00

I have been with Raja for a long time now. He told me the other day that he has managed to save close to 10k in the two and half years that he has been working. I will not blame him. Prices are rising. The house he lives costed 6.5k a month six months back. It will be 10K from June. The other houses in the same building cost 12k. The owner has been very magnanimous to him. That is primarily because he does not drink or smoke at home with his friends till 2 am on weekends and wake the neighbours. The other day Jose, Raja and I were at a restaurant. After the two of them drank some coffee, Raja pulled 20 bucks out of me to pay for the coffee. 2 cups of coffee for 18 bucks. Atrocious. And a 2 rupee tip for that sweet milky cocktail? No wonder why he has saved only about 10k.

There was a time when I was fat and big. Varad always made sure I was fed full with 100s. Those were the days when Raja and I left home early in the morning and came back after sunset. Although we entertained ourselves in everyway we could, which included movies, splurging at restaurants, philanthropy among many things, I hardly lost a 100 rupee note. That was ten years back.

The parottas at the evening stalls which used to be 2 rupees a piece is now 4 bucks. What would you call that? Prices are soaring so high that the common man would be able to drink beer only once a week. I used to pay 100 bucks for 2.16 litres of petrol not long ago. Then it became 2.04 litres for the same money; and now 1.89 litres. I remember my dad telling me that Varad used to pay Rs 19.50 for a litre of petrol and 50 ml of oil. Rkay will have to get back to eating full meals as the Subway salads have moved past Rs. 200. This is exactly why Raja stopped buying free food to other people. There will soon be a day when he will stop buying them free beer too.

Of all the undesired things that are happening, the one thing that pains me most is that I no longer get to carry as many crispy 100 rupee notes as I used to. They are replaced by stale, smelly and old 10 rupee notes. However, I am waiting for that day, when 10 rupee notes will become extinct and when the crispy 100 rupee note will become the smallest denomination.

115!

2008-05-16T12:34:00.004+01:00

Balu says his bike can clock 100 kmph just like that. Mine is a Discover too. A 125. I however have always struggled to reach 100. 90 is doable in most roads. But a 100? It has always been the thing that you could do but you wouldn't do. I always feel the bike to be running out of breath beyond 90 and I hate bruising the machine. It was the same story, until a few days back...

I had to be out one early morning and as I reached close to the Tidel Park signal, something whizzed past me and stopped at the signal for the red light - A Suzuki Burgman 650. I had the bike serviced a few days back and was in no mood to crank the accelerator. But this was an open invitation.

A 650 cc machine pumping out 54 bhp looked like a gaint compared to my bike. But what the heck. That one looks like a scooter. May be a gaint scooter. And bikes are always faster then scooters. I had to race.

There is an unspoken language at all traffic signals. As you brake and look around, you always notice 'them', and 'they' always notice 'you'. Then all of you, together, crouch and look at your visors for a second, lift up your heads and gaze at the traffic lights. The light at the adjacent signal goes yellow. Three. Two. One. It's green and go.

It is familiar territory from here on. A straight road, trees on the side that look like a hazy splash of never-ending green, a bump in the road that is always ignored, a blurry image of bikes in the rear view mirror, a feeling of intoxication, joy and elation all at one go and the speedometer reading... 115! a one hundred-and-fifteen!

As I slowed down near the Madhya Kailash turn, the Burgman whizzed past me.

I told you! Bikes are faster than Scooters!

Kiraned!

2008-05-16T11:03:00.002+01:00

Kiran is touching lives. I was surprised to see this post in Balu's blog.

http://vishwassusikar.blogspot.com/2007/12/where-is-nail-cutter.html

No wonder! Everyone gets kiraned at some point of their lives.

Building walls around you

2008-04-30T11:53:00.003+01:00

visu: do you know anything about housing loans?
raja: yeah, they restrict you from spending on anything else for the next 20 years.